'The Invisible Woman' A Review

The Invisible Woman is a period romantic drama about Charles Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan. The film opens on Nelly(Felicity Jones) aggressively walking alone across a cold, wind swept beach. She makes her way to a school, which her husband and her run, and starts a rehearsal for a play written by Charles Dickens. The film unfolds in a series of flashbacks showing her meeting the famous author and their eventual relationship.

Ralph Finnes as Charles Dickens is charming, charismatic, and at times childish. The viewer is seduced along with Nelly initially by his material in a scene where Dicken's is giving a reading. The passion and performance of the reading create a mystique and Finnes follows it up with incessant care, attention, and likability. He is always upbeat almost to the point of recklessness or a disconnect with the world around him, this is juxtaposed well with Jones's understatement, caution, and naivete. Their romance evolves gradually and relies more on the mood, tone, and score of the film rather than scenes with heavy dialogue. We get a sense of real love between the two but the sensitivity, discretion, and prudence of their courtship carries more weight. It is a dance of impending guilt rather than seduction.

There is virtually no judgement of the relationship by the supporting characters, even from Dicken's wife Catherine portrayed by a strong, reserved, yet  heartbreaking Joanna Scanlan. The judgement comes mainly from Nelly herself. Nelly is conflicted, melancholic, and seems mostly unsatisfied but unable to separate herself or her morals from the alluring Dickens. Finnes plays Dickens sympathetic and struggling to be a good man(by the definition of the times) but unable to give full focus or priority to anything but his work. A famous man use to getting what he wants, gets what he wants the way he wants it. At the end of the affair Nelly is cloistered, kept secret for Dicken's, and you get a sense she is resigned but not happy.

A complicated film with layered, poignant performances from the leads, made all the more complicated by the ease in which the love could have blossomed in modern times.

See It.