Ralph Fiennes doesn’t make things easy on himself as a director. Back in 2011, his behind-the-camera debut was a modern-day day take on one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays, and while his Coriolanus was well received by critics, audiences gave it a wide berth. Now for his sophomore effort, he takes on Charles Dickens; but not any of his much loved novels, but instead a realistic and therefore vaguely dull take on his love life.
Fiennes plays Dickens, a married-with-children celebrity back in the day, who falls for Nelly (Felicity Jones), a young but talentless actress. Due to the fact that Dickens is already married, and gossip seems to spread faster back in the day than even the most up to date gossip website today could manage, they must keep their affair a secret.
So secret, in fact, that we as audience don’t even get them to kiss once. There is a passionless sex scene later in the movie, but it could easily have been mistaken as Fiennes clumsily trying to climb off Jones having just accidentally fallen on her. The pervading sense of restraint is so well executed that it cuts of circulation to the movie entirely. Love stories, in real life anyways, do tend to end up monotonous and vaguely dull, but not before the relationship has even started!
The performances all round are fantastic, with Fiennes playing Dickens as a loving but potentially cruel man, Jones giving all she’s got behind so much bodice, Kristen Scott Thomas as Nelly’s mother who is standing as a vanguard for her daughter’s chastity, and Joanna Scanlan does put-upon unloved wife quite well.
But it’s all for nothing if we can’t connect with the characters they’re playing. While the film does appear to staying remarkably close to how the relationship actually played out, the vastly eventless courting and subsequent affair could’ve used a Mills & Boon once-over to get the pulses racing a bit.
All in all, handsomely made and acted, but could be used as a prescription cure for insomnia.