A review of the 2013 film “The Invisible Woman”
You could call this the invisible film since it has made little impact since its release and I only caught up with it during the latest lockdown of the 2020 pandemic.
Unlike “The Invisible Man”, this is not a science fiction movie, but allegedly a true story of how the famous English writer Charles Dickens (played by Ralph Fiennes who also directed) falls in love with the much younger Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones whose break-out role was a year later with “The Theory Of Everything”) who becomes his mistress and muse. It was a relationship which had to be hidden from the public, making Nelly ‘invisible’.
The account is presented from Nelly’s point of view because the film is based on the (somewhat controversial) biography penned by Claire Tomalin. The British do like period dramas and the film looks good, but I found the framing device – Nelly’s forlorn walks on Margate beach years after the death of Dickens – rather contrived and there is too little narrative to excite one’s interest or stir the emotions.