It's undeniable that the struggle for women's suffrage in England has been woefully neglected and would certainly support a good half dozen films without exhausting its importance and fascination. It's equally undeniable that screenwriter Abi Morgan has failed to deliver the standard of screenplay the subject demands; it's as if someone had indicated to Morgan that a given area of land was sitting on top of a rich seam of coal and Morgan was free to mine it to the full but instead of penetrating sufficiently deep to mine the coal she has been content to bring up the anthracite located at a shallower level. On the other hand there are some fine performances to savour, none more so than the lead - a fictional character - played by Carey Mulligan and the equally fine Ann-Marie Duff, who is responsible for raising the consciousness of Mulligan, who begins the film as a wife and mother content to work long hours in a laundry for thirteen shillings a week and winds up sans husband and child and with a prison record. THE film of the Suffragette movement is still to be made but this is a half-decent pilot fish.
Review of Suffragette
