A sensual romance, THE GOVERNESS stars Minnie Driver as Rosina Da Silva, a high-spirited young woman forced to forsake her heritage after her father’s murder. Tom Wilkinson co-stars as Driver’s employer Cavendish, an isolated gentleman whose only passion is for his work. But as Cavendish begins to teach Rosina the pioneering art of photography, she teaches him the outermost limits of passion.
The film tells the story of an educated, spirited Jewish girl from London who, in the 1840s, finds work as a governess on a remote Scottish island to support her family. She enters a household where she is clearly the intellectual equal of the father, and that is more than he can take–although he gives it a good try. The governess is fascinated by Cavendish’s photography–both the artistic side and the technical problem of fixing images so they do not fade. Photography provides the counterpoint: Their dance of attraction begins at arm’s length, through the pictures they take of each other. The claustrophobic, isolated Victorian household is a stage on which every nuance, however small, is noticed. And there are rich underlying ironies, not least that by denying their assigned places in society (he as a husband, she as a Jew), they are able for a time to function freely just as two people happy to be together in mind and body.- Roger Ebert
Starring Minnie Driver, Tom Wilkinson, Florence Hoath.
Note: Though seduction and sexuality are prominent in The Governess, they are not the real story of the movie; this is an intricate, smart and touching film with a compelling sub-plot about the early days of photography.