"The wings of the dove" has a lush yet aching beauty that seems to saturate you as you watch it. I'm not just talking about visual beauty. I'm speaking of dramatic beauty, the exquisite moment to moment tension of characters who reveal themselves layer by layer, flowing from thought to feeling and back again, until thought and feeling become drama. Director Iain Softley has made one of those rare movies that evokes not just the essence of a great novel but the experience of it. In some ways this is undeniably a "modernization" of James (a nude scene makes his underlying sensuality powerfully explicit) yet we are enveloped, at every turn in the hidden pulse of his characters' motivating passions. "The wings of the dove" is a great film - the finest "Masterpiece Theatre movie" ever made. Helena Bonham Carter has always been an earnest yet curiously remote actress, but from the moment you see her here, she has a new, dark tones womanly radiance. As Kate Croy, Carter does full justice to a heroine who loves helplessly and deeply - so deeply that she's willing to become a scoundrel out of that love. We're in London in 1910, and Kate, the ward of her manipulative rich aunt is enmeshed in a passionate but secret involvement with Merton Densher, a handsome journalist possessed of wit, devotion, a fierce commitment to his ideals - everything but money. A marriage for these two, is thus, out of the question. If Kate were simply a gold digger, it would be easy to write her off. But the necessity of material well being is no mere luxury here. It's the edifice on which the world stands, and we follow Kate into an eerily justified form of treachery. Kate has befriended Millie, a sweet, trusting American heiress who takes a shine to Merton, having no idea that he and Kate have been together. What Kate doesn't know - yet - is that Millie is dying. When she learns this, a scheme forms: She and Merton will accompany Millie to Venice, where Merton will woo her, providing the woman some romantic comfort in her last days, and not so incidentally, winning her fortune. A forgivable plan? A dastardly one? The elusive power of this movie derives from the way it embraces moral judgments and then transcends them. For it is Merton's mysterious fate not so much to fall in love with Millie as to fall in love with her death. The way this plays out is at once tender and cruel, ineffable and heartbreaking. "The wings of the dove" is a film that confirms the arrival of major screen talents: director Softley, who works in sublime sensitivity to the intricacies of self deception. Carter and Roache who create a dazzlingly intimate chemistry within the propriety of Jamesian manners - and Allison Elliot who with her beatific charm and Mona Lisa smile, does one of the most difficult things an actress can - she brings goodness itself to life.
Review of The Wings of the Dove
