"Wings of the Dove"
 A Film Review by
 Linda Lopez McAlister
 on "The Women's Show"
 WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL
 November 22, 1997

 Bringing Henry James novels or stories to the screen is a
challenge that a lot of filmmakers have taken on with varying degrees of
success.  This time it is British director Iain Softley who has risen to
the occasion with a really gorgeous film based on Henry James's "Wings of
the Dove."  My judgement that he has succeeded is not to make a judgement
as to whether or not the film is "true to the book" but that the film that
Softley and his screenwriter Hosein Amini have made from this material
stands on its own feet as a film--a very beautiful and compelling
film--with a palpable Jamesian feeling about it.

One aspect of the story that works very well is the plot.  I took
my elderly mother, who often finds "art films" confusing and boring, to
see "Wings of the Dove" and the plot here was so interesting and
compelling that it riveted her attention.   In a sense the film is better
in that regard if you haven't read the book and don't know how it comes
out since there is an air almost of suspense about how it is going to turn
out.  The story is set in 1910 and revolves around Kate (Helena
Bonham-Carter) whose mother came from the ranks of British nobility or at
least the very socially elite moneyed classes and had married a penniless
man who sank into a dissolute life of opium and crime.  After Kate's
mother died her mother's sister took her in and made it her business to
see that Kate, at least, married well, i.e., a Peer or at least a
member of the landed gentry, regardless of whether Kate loved him or not.
The number one candidate for this is an alcoholic young aristocrat who
loves Kate but who himself needs to "marry up" if he's going to have
enough money to keep up his family estates.  Kate meanwhile, is madly in
love with a commoner, Merton (Linus Roche), with whom she has trysts but
whom she cannot marry on pain of being disinherited by her aunt.  Enter
Millie (Allison Elliott), "the world's richest orphan," come from America
and stopping in London with a travelling companion/secretary for medical
treatment while on her way to Venice .  She and Kate become close friends
and Millie becomes attracted not to any of the British upper-class men she
sees, but to Merton.  When Kate hears that Millie is really terminally
ill, she hatches a plot--if Merton can seduce Millie and get her to leave
him her fortune, when she dies Kate and Merton can marry (because he will
be poor no longer) and live happily ever after.  Kate persuades Merton to
join them in Venice and the plot continues, not to be resolved until,
almost literally, the last frame of the film.

 There are only good things to say about the acting in the film,
the direction, the shot making, the editing, the production design, the
costuming, the lighting.  There is one delight after another. The use of
Gustav Klimt paintings in the mise-en-scene which are then echoed
in the body placement of the actors at key points is inspired.  Of course
they are from that art nouveau period, but as used here they are a visual
metaphor for the sexual passion contained by but bursting out from behind
the heavy, opulent and yet rigid textures of this era in recovery from
Victorianism.  Each
element fits and enhances the mood, the atmosphere, the story line.  Even
the sound effects play a part to the extent that at one point we hear the
sound of doves' wings flapping (a sound I know well from my own garden
where the doves think they own my birdfeeder).

 So I really liked every element of this film and, if this sort of
Ivory-Merchant-esque film is your cup of tea (even though Ivory and
Merchant had nothing to do with it) this is one you'll want to catch.


Linda Lopez McAlister is professor of women's studies and philosophy at
the University of South Florida, Tampa.
And proud new "mother" of Chuey "Choo Choo" Lopez McAlister the cutest
little Lhasa/Shih Tzu puppy you ever saw!

Copyright 1997.  Linda Lopez McAlister.  All rights reserved.  Please
do not reprint this review without the permission of the author: mcalist
@chuma.cas.usf.edu.  Thank you.