- Radio Times
- Review by:
- David Butcher
Sebastian Faulks’s beloved novel finally makes it to the screen in a captivating production scripted by Abi Morgan (of The Hour and The Iron Lady). Once, the likes of Ralph Fiennes and Daniel Day-Lewis were attached to movie versions, but in the end it’s rising star Eddie Redmayne who takes the role of Stephen Wraysford, the mysterious lieutenant swallowed up by the First World War but treasuring the summer he spent with a wealthy French family before the war — and the affair it led to.
Morgan’s adaptation flips smoothly between the two settings, the elegant sunlit world of pre-war Amiens and the khaki-grey misery of the trenches.
It looks beautiful when it should and feels appallingly ugly when it should, the measured pace interrupted by flashes of horror and later, passion. The latter comes courtesy of Clémence Poésy as quietly luminous Isabelle, trapped in an empty marriage with an older man.
Crucially, she and Redmayne click: you believe that beneath their stolen glances there’s a world of buried struggle.
About this programme
1/2. First of a two-part drama based on Sebastian Faulks' novel about two lovers drawn together then torn apart by the First World War. In the France of 1910, Englishman Stephen Wraysford arrives to work at the textile factory of the Azaire family, only to fall desperately in love with his host's wife Isabelle. Before long, the pair begin an illicit and all-consuming affair, with huge consequences for them both. Eddie Redmayne (My Week with Marilyn) and Clemence Poesy (the Harry Potter films) star as the lovers, with support from Joseph Mawle, Richard Madden and Matthew Goode. Adapted by Abi Morgan, writer of The Hour and The Iron Lady.
Cast and crew
Cast
- Stephen Wraysford
- Eddie Redmayne
- Isabelle
- Clemence Poesy
- Jack Firebrace
- Joseph Mawle
- Jeanne
- Marie-Josee Croze
- Capt Gray
- Matthew Goode
- Rene Azaire
- Laurent Lafitte
- Capt Weir
- Richard Madden
- Monsieur Berard
- Patrice Thibaud
- Mme Berard
- Isabelle Gomez
- Lisette Azaire
- Clara Grebot
- Gregoire Azaire
- Maxime Roussel
- Pte Douglas
- George MacKay
- Evans
- Simon Nehan
- Shaw
- Daniel Cerqueira
- Turner
- Sean McKenzie
- Pte Tipper
- Thomas Turgoose
- Pte Brennan
- Rory Keenan
- Tyson
- Paul Rattray
- RSM Price
- Nick Moss
- Lebrun
- Mate Szabo
- Pte Byrne
- Matthew Aubrey
- Marguerite
- Piroska Molnar
Crew
- Director
- Philip Martin
- Executive Producer
- Juliette Howell
- Producer
- Lynn Horsford
- Writer
- Abi Morgan
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