The French Lieutenant’s Woman takes its time getting interesting, even though its provocative postmodern structure is clear from the start: we’re watching both a Victorian period piece about an English gentleman (Jeremy Irons) who falls disastrously for a woman with a sordid reputation (Meryl Streep) and a contemporary drama about the actors who are playing those parts in the movie, while engaged in their own affair. (Harold Pinter adapted the John Fowles novel for director Karel Reisz.) The choppy, back-and-forth structure makes it difficult to invest in either narrative or for any of these figures to feel like full characters. And you almost wonder if the period movie within the movie is supposed to be bad—a florid hothouse bodice-ripper. Irons plays his scenes like a flustered foghorn and even Streep seems uncharacteristically unsteady (in both the accent work and the emphatic nature of her line deliveries). At any rate, Streep’s period character makes a turn in the film’s second half that upends both narratives in compelling ways, allowing The French Lieutenant’s Woman to become the feminist rug-puller it had always intended to be. I just wish it hadn’t taken quite so long to get there.
(5/7/2026)
