The Third Movie I Saw This Weekend Was Flaherty's "Louisiana Story"

One of my favorite novels of all time is John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. I don't remember whether I saw the movie or read the book first, but whichever it was motivated me to take in the other. I never studied Fowles at school or in college – in fact, most of my exposure to literary theory has been through its social-science applications – but Fowles seems to be a classic postmodernist, at least in the way he intertwines the writer and the written. The movie is a pale shadow of the book, but still an admirable attempt to do on celluloid what Fowles did on paper. Sarah Woodruff is, to me, one of the most intriguing characters in fiction.

I bring this up because last night I watched the film adaptation of A.S. Byatt's Possession, which I read within a couple of months of first reading The French Lieutenant's Woman (late 1991, it was). For some reason the book came to mind again, and I do want to re-read it; but my reading list is quite long, so the movie seemed like a good compromise. I don't remember thinking the books were particularly similar in style, but I think the film adaptations certainly are. If anything, I think TFLW is more successful; it is certainly more faithful to the spirit of the book, I think, than Possession is. At least, I found Possession's departures from what I remember of the book to be more annoying than TFLW's departures. Aside from that, what I mainly didn't like about Possession was its thin characterizations and tendency to deal in types rather than individuals. But I had forgotten enough of the core mystery (even the last shock in a story of shocks) to enjoy its unfolding, and it has enough of the appeal of the book to make me even more interested in reading it again.

Both are wonderfully rich, thoughtful books, and I don't see how either could have been done better on film within a 2-hour limit.

If you've neither read nor seen Possession, my suggestion is read it, wait ten years, see the film, then re-read the book. For TFLW, see the film first (you'll probably be confused, but it must be done this way), read the book, then see the film again, within a couple of months.

(I wanted to see what Roger Ebert thought about the two films, but I purposely waited until I'd written my bit. His reviews are worth reading, though: TFLW / Possession)