Rating: 
Summary: LAVISH CINEMATOGRAPHY...INTRIGUING PERIOD PIECE
Review: Set in mid nineteenth century England and Scotland, this is a lush and beautifully shot film which those who love period pieces should very much enjoy. This one is a little unusual in that the storyline revolves around a sephardic Jewess, Rosalina Da Silva, who lives in London with her family. When her father dies most unexpectedly, the family suffers a reversal of fortune, and Rosalina must either marry or work in order to be able to assist her family financially. A passionate, intelligent, and earthy woman for her time, Rosalina opts to work, rather than marry the unattractive, older fish merchant who comes a courting.Looking forward to adventure and a change of scenery, she obtains employment as a governess to the Protestant, upper crust Cavendish family on the remote Isle of Skye in Scotland. She obtains the position under the assumed name "Mary Black-Church" in order to avoid anti-semitism. Shortly after her arrival, she meets the lady of the house, a vapid, bored, and totally uninteresting woman, as well as her charge, a spoiled young girl, whom "Mary" quickly sets to right. The man of the house, Charles Cavendish, is an educated, seemingly middle aged man, introspective and remote, engaged in perfecting the process involved in that of early photography, a project in which his wife is clearly uninterested. "Mary", inquisitive and freed of her familial constraints, becomes interested in his work, much to Mr. Cavendish's surprise and ultimate delight. While he only photographs inanimate objects, "Mary" is much more intrigued by the idea of capturing a living likeness, an interest in which Charles Cavendish neither shares nor comprehends. Initially drawn to "Mary" by her seeming interest in his project, a spark ignites between them, and they begin a quite torrid and passionate affair which "Mary" overtly invites. The affair comes crashing down when "Mary" takes some nude shots of Charles while he is sleeping. Caught in so vulnerable and compromising a position, Charles abruptly ends the affair, much to "Mary's" torment and despair. "Mary" retaliates in a big way, sending the household rocking, by having an affair with Charles' son, Harry, and, ultimately, by giving the wife her very own set of photographs of her husband. Never underestimate the fury of a woman scorned! "Mary" returns to London and her home, reassuming her own identity. What she does with her newly acquired skill in photography is sure to delight feminists everywhere. As to what Charles Cavensish eventually does about "Mary", watch the movie and see who has the last laugh. Minnie Driver gives a wonderful portrayal as the spirited Rosalina Da Silva, while Tom Wilkinson gives a fine performance as the dour Charles Cavendish, a man caught in a web of his own making. The love scenes between the two, however, at times do not quite work, almost as if there were no chemistry between the two. Perhaps it is because "Mary" initiates the affair, and it is somewhat unexpected and jarring to have her do so. Yet, at other times the love scenes are positively sensual and consummately erotic...especially the veil scene. Harriet Walters does justice to her role as the insipid Mrs. Cavendish. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers gives an affecting perfomance as Harry, the coltish, hunky son. Florence Hoath rounds out this excellent cast, as the young girl for whom "Mary" was hired. All in all, this is an unusual and interesting film. While the story may occasionally seem a little disjointed, it is still a compelling period drama and well worth watching.
Rating: 
Summary: A window to a beautiful--and beautified--world
Review: The film starts with the celebration of Purim--a very fun, carnival-like, Jewish holiday--amongst the Sephardic (Spanish & Portguese) Jews of 1830s London. We see a synagogue, supposedly the 1700s Bevis Marks, and a rabbi leading the sermon--and wearing a top hat. This is not a usual portrayal of Jews--the synagogue is full of men in top hats, and the heroine, Rosina da Silva, is sitting in the gallery wearing a beautiful Spanish mantilla. There is no persecution, Rosina's family is not benighted--rather, they are fairly wealthy (as Rosina walks into her house, a maid drops her a curtsy) and worldly, but still steeped deeply and beautifully in their own customs (Rosina wears a Spanish headdress; Rosina and her suitor, Benjamin, dance a lovely dance in two circles of women and men, respectively, never touching, but darting glances at each other--to the tune of the nearly 1000-year-old Avram Avinu). The outside world is no more than a curiosity: the inspired discussion between Rosina and her younger sister centers about the mysterious desert that gentile have--it looks like semen and is called semolina (naturally, when Rosina comes to live with the as-gentile-as-possible family off the coast of Scotland, guess what she gets for desert?). Rosina's world is beautiful--it's music, laughter, beautiful fabrics, dancing, bright candle-light. Outside, unfortunately, is Whitechapel--and it breaks into the happy celebration, when Rosina's father is stuck with a knife in the street outside. Here, it is possible to see the clash of the sheltered Jewish inside and the brutal outside. Rosina's mother, shaken, is whispering: "We do not get murdered... We do not have debts..." Faced with the prospect of marrying a rather repellent fish merchant (a very similar character to Sholem Aleichem's disgusting Reb Leizer Wulf), Rosina chooses employment instead--as a governess. Of course, she over-dramatizes, and makes up for herself as Christian name as possible: Mary Blackchurch. Named so, she is hired by a gentile family in the Isle of Skye; the mother is boring and bored, dreaming of London, where she had never been, as if it is her rightful place to be there; the daughter--Rosina's charge--is a bit devilish; the father dabbles in "science" (in photography, Rosina later discovers)--and suffers because he cannot capture the images he makes, having no fixation: they fade, after a day or so, into nothingness; and the son has been sent down from Oxford after having been found in an opium den with a prostitute (supposedly). There, Rosina will become her employer's assistant--and mistress. I loved the casting of Minnie Driver as Rosina--she has the archetypal Jewish beauty, and her black dresses and Spanish mantillas contrast beautifully with her mistress' ridiculous hairdos. Tom Wilkinson as Cavendish, Rosina's employer and love interest, I did not love quite as much. There was very little chemistry between them from the beginning; had Cavendish possessed a bit more charm, you could write it off on superficial attraction. Here, you only had to wonder what on earth has she found in him--enough to overcome her modesty? He looks tired and old and ruffled... Rosina's exploits into photography are beautifully done--from the subject matter of Cavendish's experiments (mostly dead birds' wings), to her discovery of the saline fixation (during her lonely Passover celebration, she spills a bit of salt water onto one of Cavendish's fading prints, and it keeps the picture from fading), to the photo sessions in which they photograph each other, to Rosina's later work in London, where she uses a camera obscura to capture the beauty of her own people. In general, the film itself is a bit like a camera obscura--one has the feeling of looking into dark box, and a world, wholly unexpected and wildly beautiful, is looking back at you. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the early Victorian era.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Piece of Art that Will Touch Your Heart!!!!
Review: The governess is a beautiful film that lets you inside the secret parts of the human soul as it struggled to exist during a time so unlike our own. Every character allows you to feel the pain of the lack of freedom of expression and exploration of the 1800's. Mary Black-Church will make you long to be a Jewess, while the pitiful Mrs. Cavendish will make you realize how blessed you are to be a woman of the 90's. You'll fall in love with Charles Cavendish even with all his weaknesses and although it wasn't altogether clear how old Henry was supposed to be, his heart rending performance will bring back memories of that first love and the pains of growing up. This isn't the type of film you'll want to watch on a Saturday night when your looking for light entertainment. But if you love books, art, or history and like a movie that makes you think , you'll enjoy The governess. "The Chinese Box" is another film that explores the phenomanon of why we always love what we cannot have. Also heavy on the history it will make you "feel" the way The governess did.
Rating:
Summary: The sensuality of photography....
Review: THE GOVERNESS is a beautifully shot period piece that revolves around the character of Rosalina, played with remarkable depth by Minnie Driver. Ms. Driver carried the full weight of this film with skill, and I daresay that she has never looked more beautiful or ravishing than in this movie. The film deals with her journey, torn between Jew and incertainty with Gentiles, her love for an older, married man, played by Tom Wilkinson (In The Bedroom), and the unwanted affection of the man's son. A large portion of the film deals with Mr. Cavendish's experiments with photography. When Rosalina first comes to the Cavendish's home, she is told Mr. Cavendish's secret experiments deal with capturing pictures of ghosts, and indeed, he does seem preoccupied with taking pictures of dead things: a shell from the beach, a bird's wing. He finds beauty in unexpected places, and it is when he finds Rosalina shares the same views that their relationship blossoms, and she becomes his favorite subject to photograph. The scenes of Rosalina's photo being taken are beautifully shot. The sensuality of the camera is greatly evident and capitalized upon in the film, and you become aware that even today's cold, calculated video cameras still have a spark of that warmth from their early precedessors. The color in the film is vibrant, as when Rosalina wears a bright red coat or when she returns home, her neighborhood stricken with cholera, and shades of blue fill the screen. THE GOVERNESS is a great period piece, but Minnie Driver's wonderful performance should be reason enough to see it
Rating:
Summary: One of Minnie Driver's best performances.
Review: The Governess is one of the best period pieces I have ever seen. The cinematography, the costumes, and the charactar development and perfomances throughout the film is compelling and interesting. If you want a movie which makes you think, entertains you and provokes dicussion about unrequited love and emotionally stunted relationships, this is the one for. Very much teh same vien as a Jane Campion film. Minnie Driver delivers a powerful performance, worthy of a golden globe.
Rating: 
Summary: From mediocre to worse
Review: The movie begins with a thud...and only gets worse. Rosina da Silva (Minnie Driver) is about to be married off to a man that she doesn't love when her beloved father dies and leaves the family without much money. A good Jane Austen setup, right? It only goes downhill from here. Rosina thereafter seeks a position with a wealthy English family, the Cavendishes. However, to do so she must hide the fact that she is Jewish (this is the late 1800s, and prejudice against Jews is rampant). She therefore changes her name to Mary Blackchurch and goes to live with the Cavendishes as the governess to their daughter Clementina. Rosina continues to practice some Jewish rituals (we see her, for instance, saying the blessing over a candle on Shabbat and trying to have her own Passover seder), and it's just a matter of time until she's found out--which, predictably enough, she is, by Cavendish son Henry, who has fallen in love with her. But that's not enough plot, so director Sandra Goldbacher has Rosina fall in love with Mr. Cavendish (Tom Wilkinson of "The Full MOnty"), who is attempting to become a pioneer in the new field of photography. Rosina begins to help Mr. Cavendish with his project, and the two begin an affair despite the fact that there is absolutely NO chemistry between them. The best moments in the movie involve little-seen characters Henry (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Mrs. Cavendish (Harriet Walter, the evil sister-in-law Fanny in "Sense and Sensibility"). Driver is woefully miscast, mispronouncing Hebrew words every time she tries to do so and striking no sparks with Wilkinson. The scene at the end where Mr. Cavendish breaks off their affair (trust me, I'm not spoiling anything here) is downright embarrassing as Driver wails and clings. A movie that fails to live up to its Jane Austen-esque promise....
Rating:
Summary: lotta plot(s), but lovely picture(s)
Review: The plots: sexual tension between a governess and her employer, tension of a woman in a foreign place, and all along the struggle to make pictures.... Mary, to the world, is a governess working in a Protestant house in Scotland. But Jane Eyre she isn't-she puts away her dreams of acting after the death of her father forces her to bring in a family income-all in the while she conceals that she is Rosina, a Jewess pretending to be of Italian descent. It is no lie when she reassures the lady of the house she isn't Catholic. Her new surroundings are more than dyfunctional. The character of the bored mother is unoccupied and perched in a gilded but bland cage, propped up and seated in nearly every scene like she's dead and posed "in state." Her husband, Cavendish, hides away with his mysterious science studies and the daughter(Rosina/"Mary's" charge) whose responds to boredom (and a lack of attention) differently than her mother by playing pranks on her new governess. The son, a decade older and recently expelled from school, is a product of this same boredom, grown but immature as his sister and decidedly perverse. After a prank by the daughter, the governess quickly lets her student know who's boss, and the student becomes more submissive. But their bonding lessens as Rosina's becomes curious about the father, who becomes equally curious about her. She pays less attention to her student and more to her employer, who, impressed with her knowledge and curiosty (he has no anger after she sneaks into his archaic photo laboratory) she eventually becomes his assistant. All in the while Rosina's dead father visits her in her dreams and memories-until Cavendish replaces her father in dreams and the two have an inevitable affair. Then there is second plot is Rosina, a Jew of Spanish/Portuguese decent, who feels akward in a gentile setting. She isn't used to the foreign food (she and her sister once believed semolina to be semen) and artifacts. While it's funny to watch her pick up a crucifix for the first time, look at it, then toss it to the side, it's sad to watch her eat passover alone, in secret. She remembers her father and passover as a child as she eats an egg in salt water-which spills on a nearby photo. This is the breakthrough to getting a picture developed, literally, the third plot, Rosina and Cavendish learning the process of photogaphy,outside the sexual tension. Though both are student to discovering the scientific process, it is only Rosina who is willing to take it a step further, photography as an art. The art/science photography is the undoing of their little situation, the business and pleasure. The final straw is Cavendish revealing his new process and not sharing the credit for it-he was still bitter about her secret pictures of him, nude, as he forbade. So, Rosina, endowed with a new ability to make an income, decides it's unnecessary to hide her true identity or stay in the employ of a man who betrayed her. She leaves the family in style: on the way out the door she hands bored Mrs. Cavendish what the housewife always sat yearning for, a piece of "culture"-her husband's nude portrait. That's just a few plot circles and it does feel like a long film at times. Rosina and Cavendish have a strange sexual tension, an attraction to each other (if not a lack of screen chemistry) that both characters seem almost surpised at. The younger Cavendish is an imp, hardly in the film (it's like he's purpose is to barely pop out from the background), and I wish he and Rosina had more screen time. Overall, it's a gorgous period film and the colorful setting of the Sephardic Jewish London is so welcome after a string of movies set in what feels like the same 19th century, Pre-Dickinson-Pre-Industrial rural 'scape. The Austin/Eliot/Brontes have their merits, and I am a fan of Sense and Sensibilty (Emma Thompson's), but I think Hollywood should keep taking us to new places, like in this lovely film.
Rating:
Summary: Eye Candy
Review: The strength of this film is not in the plot or the depth of characters. In 19th Century London, a wealthy Jewish merchant is murdered and, for some unknown reason, leaves his family destitute. His intelligent and ambitious daughter pretends to be Christian in order to accept a position as governess for a dysfunctional family living in Scotland. She immediately, and simplistically, wins over her charge, an irritating little girl. Soon , the governess becomes an assistant to the reclusive father who is obsessed with finding a way to preserve photo images. Add a discontented mother who hates being stuck in Scotland and an obsessive post-adolescent son and you have a standard plot. What makes "The Governess" so enjoyable are the beautiful and intriguing images of the people and places. The film is candy for the eyes. Sit back and enjoy the sights and don't worry too much about the plot.
Rating:
Summary: What have you done to me Miss Blackchurch!
Review: There are some good things in this movie....then there are also some bad... Bad first-The dialogue in some places seems extremely over the top. Tom Wilkinson and Minne Driver do not seem comfortable at all in the somewhat silly love scenes that are laced through the movie. Good-Strong soundtrack. Strong acting. Especially Jonathan Rhys Meyer's portrayal of Henry...This movie made me sorely want to take him to Mcdonald's and handfeed him french fries....and Big Mac's while petting his pretty little face....Clementina was an espcially interesting character. Well, that's all....TA!
Rating:
Summary: wheres the plot?
Review: this is just an excuse 4 jrm to lose his shirt and everybody to have affairs with everyone else! thats why i like it!
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