_Jefferson in Paris_ 
reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs


     With spring comes movie romances, big and small. At least that's the
rumor. Merchant and Ivory's _Jefferson in Paris_ aspires to bigness. With
sumptuous costumes, a script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala set during the early
moments of the French Revolution, and narrative framing by a descendent of
Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, the film appears to have a
large scope, a sense of history. And it uses the relationship between
Jefferson and Hemings (which is, after all, still being debated) to get at
even larger issues, like reconciling Jefferson-the-democratic- hero with
Jefferson-the-diehard-slaveowner, and from there, reconciling U.S. ideals
with U.S. practices. 

     Jefferson is the central metaphor here; his contradictions and
confusions become a lens for reading myth, history, and the
spectacularizing of both. As embodied by Nick Nolte, he's a lumberer, an
American philosopher in a strange land, surrounded by decadence, not quite
able to put his thoughts into action (the aristocrats play a parlor game
called "heart and mind,'' apparently taken from Jefferson's writings). He
wants to be passionate, but he's constrained, a politician nervous about
appearances; he speaks slowly, gestures grandly, and seems vaguely pained
as he clunks about in his elaborate 18th-century footwear. (I saw this
movie around the time I saw _Outbreak_, and it occurred to me that Nolte
could have used Dustin Hoffman's anti- contamination spacesuit; he seems
that uncomfortable in this setting.)

     The movie is structured as a series of doubled images, suggesting
Jefferson's emotional- intellectual split: it opens with Jefferson writing
in his Parisian study, where he's serving as the U.S. ambassador to
France. He uses an ingeniously devised contraption which allows him to
compose his letters while duplicating them at the same time: as the pen
scratches across the rough paper, the voice-over tells you what's on his
mind. Unfortunately, that's not much. And this lack becomes the film's
irrecuperable vacuum. A lonely widower, Jefferson soon meets a lively,
lovely socialite, Maria Cosway (Greta Scacchi). Gorgeously arrayed in
colorful gowns and enormous wigs, she has a faintly exotic appeal,
amplified by her trace of an accent (she's English-Italian) and an
earnest, archetypally "earthy" sensuality. (Plus, she rides horses.)

     Still, Jefferson is torn, committed to his sense of social propriety,
as well as to his very nervous, very uptight daughter Patsy (Gwyneth
Paltrow). So he represses what might have been lustful urges and turns to
what seems to be his work: borrowing Dutch money to repay some of his
young country's debts, observing the brewing revolution and suffering his
French friends' accusations of hypocrisy. They note that his "all men are
created equal'' line is seriously compromised by the fact that he keeps
slaves, specifically, in France, James Hemings (Seth Gilliam) and his
sister Sally (Thandie Newton). 

     The film segues awkwardly into Jefferson's relationship with Sally
(which the poster, with its ghostly portrait of Newton cast over a French
palais, promotes as the film's focus). And this obviously troublesome
relationship (given historical disputes and the ideological complications
it raises) is oddly displaced as drama. There's no apparent reason for
their liaison, except perhaps Jefferson's desire for and explicit power
over her, and the movie doesn't explore any of its dynamics. The fact that
he's sleeping with his slave engenders such disgust in Maria and Patsy,
that _they_ appear to be the unenlightened, racist villains of the piece,
a displacement which begs the question of Jefferson's responsibility.




Cynthia Fuchs teaches film and media studies at George Mason University.

Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs.  All rights reserved.
Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author.

This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.