With its literary tone, blunted action in a confined space and feminist leanings, this well-received suspenser ought to be more effective than it is. But director Lisa Mulcahy proves unable to bring off the slow-burn pace she sets. A shame as it’s an intriguingly disturbing period piece set at an isolated Irish estate where a recently orphaned teenage girl, now mistress of the house but three years before reaching her majority, ignores legal advise to contest her father’s will installing her disgraced uncle as guardian. He’s just been cleared of a murder charge and her late father thought this would help restore the family name. Bringing along his flippant daughter and depraved son, the interlopers are soon attempting to ‘gaslight’ the young heiress into an asylum with the help of her own advisor whom they’ve likely compromised with bribes to come. But stalled in his goals, the uncle sends in the son, using rape as a marriage proposal. And while we know the worm will eventually turn on these relatives, and that the girl’s actions stem from systemic women’s suppression and a lack of rights, our victim seems less a study in gender politics/control, more slow to react. (At 28, Agnes O’Casey looks anything but helpless teen victim. So, when she turns the tables in the third act, there’s little surprise.) The whole film plays as if one of the Brontë sisters had done a rewrite of LADY IN A CAGE for Masterpiece Theatre.
DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, your choice from the many JANE EYRE adaptations for a jolt of Charlotte Brontë and LADY IN A CAGE/’64, one of those popular mid-‘60s ‘let’s debase a Golden Age Hollywood legend’ pics. This time, Olivia de Havilland gets the treatment from young, rising James Caan.
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