The Bostonians

Producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala were still honing their craft with this middling adaptation of the 1889 Henry James novel of the same name, a style initiated by their 1979 adaptation of Henry James's The Europeans, like this film set in the early days of the suffragette movement. It would find its definitive form with their 1992 adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel "Howards End".

In both cases Ruth Prawer Jhabvala provides the script whilst Vanessa Redgrave takes on a much bigger chunk of the acting duties here as Bostonian feminist (and lesbian) avant la lettre, Olive Chancellor.

I say avant la lettre with respect to Sapphic love because whilst feminism,women’s right and such were finding broad societal recognition at the time, lesbianism was still conceptually a bit too much for the vast majority. Even Olive is uncertain about what is permissible.

The object of Olive’s confused attraction is Verena Tarrant (Madeleine Potter) who is supposed to be Olive’s protégé when it comes to advancing the feminist cause on the burgeoning late Victorian speaking circuit but whose youth eclipses Olive’s appeal. To Olive’s frustration Verena thirst for experience attracts the attentions of a handsome young Southern gentlemen (Christopher Reeve) who wants to sweep her off her feet which his manliness, something to which Verena responds but by which Olive is disgusted. The film is the story of the emotional tug-of-war the three characters’ experience as they fight for the right to party

Although Ruth Prawer Jhabvala script lacks the sensitivity of the mature Merchant-Ivory house style and Redgrave, albeit a staple of the English costume drama of this period, in general is a stereotypical performer but blessed by a go-to lineage, is miscast here. Jessica Tandy plays Ms Birdseye, a sweet spinster who looks on with amusement in a film that shows how much more suited to the English sensibility were Merchant and Ivory. 

 

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