Jane Gurnett Movies
U.K. documentary filmmaker Philippa Lowthorpe brings an experimental approach to the costume drama The Other Boleyn Girl, produced for television by BBC Films. Shot with a handheld digital camera, the film is a largely improvised project based on the best-selling novel by Philippa Gregory. In 16th century England, the recently married Mary Boleyn (Natascha McElhone) is encouraged to have an affair with the notorious King Henry VIII (Jared Harris) in order to improve the power of her family. When she gets pregnant, the king turns his attention to her sister Anne Boleyn (Jodhi May). Learning to play by the degrading rules of the king's court, Anne conspires with her brother George (Steven Mackintosh) to produce a male heir. The Other Boleyn Girl first aired on BBC Two March 28, 2003. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Natascha McElhone, Jodhi May, (more)
- 1999
Originally telecast by the BBC in 1999, Trial by Fire served as the unofficial pilot film for the Helen West mystery series, based on the novels by Frances Fyfield. Moving from London to the supposed tranquility of the suburbs, prosecutor Helen West (Juliet Stevenson) and her police-chief boyfriend, Geoffrey Bailey (Jim Carter), don't find very much peace and quiet. In fact, things are almost as bad as in the big city, what with spousal abuse, kleptomania, and murder running amok. Much against her will, Helen is drawn into the intrigues of her new murder -- and by extension, so is Geoffrey, who totally disagrees with Helen's deductions. Trial by Fire aired in the U.S. as an episode of the PBS Mystery! anthology on February 24, 2000; in the subsequent Helen West series, the roles of Helen and Geoffrey were respectively played by Amanda Burton and Conor Mullen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Juliet Stevenson, Jim Carter, (more)
- 1990
This British version of Lorna Doone is one of the more rewarding film adaptations of the venerable R. D. Blackmore novel. The plot remains as ever: Lorna (Polly Walker), a feisty 17th century Scots lass, falls in love with a much-despised landowner (Sean Bean). Lorna's father, a notorious brigand, foments a peasant rebellion against her lover. It turns out of course, that Lorna is actually a high-born heiress, kidnapped in infancy. Billie Whitelaw and Rachel Kempson costar in this made-for-television costume epic. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1989
Melancholia is a British suspenser, filmed and financed in Germany. Jeroen Krabbe plays a German art critic who in more turbulent times had been a radical activist. Krabbe's past collides with his present when a London political figure is marked for assassination. With only the slightest tinge of conscience, Krabbe agrees to pull off the killing. It is always a pleasure to see leading lady Susannah York, even in the morally ambivalent circumstances of Melancholia. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeroen Krabbé, Susannah York, (more)
- 1989
- R
Director Ken Russell returns to the D.H. Lawrence territory that had earlier served him well in Women in Love. Sammi Davis plays Lawrence's Welsh heroine Ursula Brangwen, daughter of a wealthy mine owner, who is first seen as a child given to literally chasing rainbows. Disappointed that she can never have the real thing, the older Davis seeks out figurative rainbows in the form of sexual fulfillment. Neither heterosexual nor homosexual affairs fully satisfy Davis, because no one lover can match the "ideal" the girl has created in her imagination. Davis' disappointment in the world is paralleled with the sorry lot of the wives of the local coal miners, who have adapted to their lives--something Davis can never do, will never do. Stately despite its raw subject matter, The Rainbow was filmed just before Russell's outrageous sword-and-sorcery fantasy Lair of the White Worm; since both films utilize many of the same cast members, the two pictures might make an astonishing double feature. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sammi Davis, Paul McGann, (more)
- 1988
- R
Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II (Juliet Stevenson), and granddaughter Cissie Colpitts III (Joely Richardson) -- have all discovered the same way of dealing with their marital problems. The senior Cissie has drowned her husband Jake (Bryan Pringle) in the bathtub, her daughter sent her spouse Hardy (Trevor Cooper) to a watery grave in the ocean, and the youngest Cissie sent her husband Bellamy (David Morrissey) down in a swimming pool. Needless to say, local coroner Henry Madgett (Barnard Hill) has some questions about this sudden rash of drownings among the Colpitts husbands, and again all three women respond in the same way: they promise to sleep with Henry in exchange for recording the deaths as accidental (though none of the Cissies make good on this promise). When the local gossip mill begins working overtime about this sudden rash of water-related deaths, Henry's teenage son Smut (Jason Edwards) comes to the aid of the Cissies and organizes a tug-of-war, with he and the Colpitts women on one side and the doubting townspeople on the other (and, of course, a river in the middle). Along the way, Greenaway often stops to contemplate his obsessions with literature, astronomy, and numbers. Drowning by Numbers was released in Europe in 1988, but didn't find its way to American screens until 1991, following the success of Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bernard Hill, Joan Plowright, (more)
