Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

Middle-class dramas were once the staple of the British cinema, but they now largely exist in the form of costume pictures. Thaddeus O'Sullivan's The Heart of Me, for instance, seems almost to be re-creating a Gainsborough women's weepie that 60 years ago would have starred Margaret Lockwood, Celia Johnson, Phyllis Calvert or Dulcie Gray. In this sense it's a local counterpart to Todd Haynes's Fifties Hollywood pastiche Far From Heaven, though rather less polished.
The film is adapted by Lucinda Coxon from Rosamond Lehmann's 1953 novel The Echoing Grove, and centres on the triangular affair between two sisters, Madeleine (Olivia Williams) and Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter) and Madeleine's husband, Rickie (Paul Bettany), who has some vague but well paid job in the City. The movie begins at the funeral in 1934 of the girls' father with everyone in black and the women in veils. This sets the earnest lugubrious tone. Their mother (Eleanor Bron), with the glib cruelty that was once typical of the way parents pigeon-holed children, comments that Madeleine made her father proud, and Dinah made him happy. Madeleine is the responsible one who has made a good marriage, has a well-behaved young son, runs a tidy household, entertains her husband's friends. Dinah, on the other hand, is unmarried, unsettled, semi-bohemian, seems to have liberal views and is a coarsened version of Shaw's new woman. Madeleine is composed, considerate, given to small frowns and gentle smiles; Dinah pulls faces, laughs, cocks her head, has a comic body language. Rickie is drawn to his sister-in-law who offers a liberating alternative to Madeleine's prim repression, and what begins as a brief fling turns into an all-consuming passion.
The film is rather boldly structured in that about half-an-hour in, when Dinah tells Rickie she's pregnant and intends to have the child, the action suddenly jumps forward a decade to 1946. In the austerity of immediately postwar Britain (Madeleine is growing leeks in the garden of her grand Georgian terrace house), the two sisters meet again for a little bloodletting, truth-telling and reconciliation. There follows a series of flashbacks revealing the course of the affair between Dinah and Rickie, and how they became the victims of a face-saving middle-class conspiracy. What the movie resembles - because of its period, social background, plot and structure - is a secular version of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, which appeared a year or so before Lehmann's novel.
The movie is sad and romantic in a very English way and examines with some subtlety the relationship between sisters, the values and torments of social conventions, and the creative and destructive power of love. It takes no sides, and both in its observation and acting avoids satire or caricature. Running through it is a couplet by William Blake that is a particular favourite of Dinah's: 'And throughout all eternity / I forgive you, you forgive me.
Though their problems and concerns are universal, the characters belong in their period, which is convincingly recreated in speech and decor, but not in a self-consciously loving way that might invite us to think those times preferable to our own. The costumes are particularly good, especially a black and silver party dress worn by Olivia Williams that could take its place in the current Art Deco show at the V & A. I did, however, wonder why such a fashionable house as Madeleine and Rickie's didn't have elegant wallpaper or stair carpeting, but maybe that's my ignorance. I also think I noticed an anachronistic Penguin special among the possessions arrayed to suggest Dinah's independent mind. Like a good number of movies nowadays part of The Heart of Me was shot in the Isle of Man, but not set there, and there's a particular seaside cottage (here standing in for Devon) that is fast becoming as familiar as those old permanent sets in Hollywood studios.

Vocabulary:

anachronistic - anachroniczny

array - to set or place in order , ułożyć

austerity - surowość, prostota

bloodletting - bloodshed, krwawe porachunki, upust krwi

boldly - odważnie, zuchwale, śmiało

coarsened - made ordinary or inferior in quality or value, spospolitowany, zwulgaryzowany

to cock - obracać, pochylać

composed - free from agitation, calm, spokojny, zrównoważony

considerate - thoughtful of the rights and feelings of others, uważający, troskliwy, delikatny, ostrożny

counterpart - one having the same function or characteristics as another, odpowiednik, duplikat

drawn to sb - attracted, allured, zafascynowany, zadurzony, zauroczony

earnest - characterized by or proceeding from an intense and serious state of mind, poważny, także: szczery, sumienny

face-saving - - zachowywanie twarzy, unikanie kompromitacji

flashback - interruption of chronological sequence (as in a film or literary work) by interjection of events of earlier occurrence, nawiązanie do przeszłości, wspomnienie

fling - a casual or brief love affair, przejściowy romans, przygoda miłosna

frown - a wrinkling of the brow in displeasure or concentration , zmarszczenie brwi

given to - prone, disposed, ze skłonnością do, z nawykiem do, z tendencją do

glib - marked by ease and fluency in speaking or writing often to the point of being insincere or deceitful,gładki, elokwentny, nonszelancki

grove - zagajnik, lasek, gaj

leek - a biennial garden herb of the lily family grown for its mildly pungent succulent linear leaves and especially for its thick cylindrical stalk, por

lugubrious - exaggeratedly or affectedly mournful, ponury, posępny, mroczny, żałobny

pigeon-hole - to put off or aside , odłożyć, odrzucić

plot - fabuła

prim - stiffly formal and proper, sztywny, pedantyczny, afektowany

to pull faces - robić miny

satire - satyra

staple - a chief commodity or production of a place, główny produkt, specjalność, podstawa, baza, ważna część, istotny składnik

torment - extreme pain or anguish of body or mind, katusze, męki, cierpienie

vague - not clearly defined, obscure, niesprecyzowany, nie do końca określony

weepie - an extravagantly pathetic story, song, play, film, or broadcast, a tearjerker, wyciskacz łez


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