Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

gridoon2018 Personally I don't much care for the term "chick flick", but "The French Lieutenant's Woman" probably falls under that category - albeit a chick flick of the highest order. Handsomely staged, impeccably crafted, well acted, ingeniously structured....but not as dramatically involving as it should have been, until the bittersweet ending(s). *** out of 4.

victoriavaradi-47267 I think the film shows us how difficult it is for people to achieve true love, regardless of the age they live in. Although it might seem that today there is less direct pressure from society, but there are other different reasons to make people stay in the status quo, convenience can be very powerful too. In the very beginning of the film Anne watches herself (Sarah) in the mirror, which in one hand is the beginning of Ana's, the actress's transformation into Sarah, and in my eyes it is also a nice allegory of how the two parallel stories in the film reflect on each other. They are in fact more or less the same, except from the ending. In the film Ana and Mike are acting in, Sarah and Charles end up together, but Ana and Mike don't stay together. For me the overall message of the film was, that romantic love only triumphs in tales, in a romanticized world, but not in reality. I liked the contrasting cinematic styles of the two story lines, the acting was great, and also liked the different endings. For me the main flaw was that the "present" story-line felt very much overpowered by the Victorian story-line, it felt it was less important, and we also didn't get to know too much about Ana and Charles. Even if portraying the two relationships in an equally significant way would have been very very difficult in two hours, but I think it would have served the theme of the film better. Plus because I don't believe in love at first sight, it's always hard for me to believe that two characters can fall deeply in love with each other as fast as Sarah and Charles did.

Robert J. Maxwell If you like Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and novelists of that ilk, you ought to get a bang out of this story of Jeremy Irons sacrificing his self esteem for love of a woman whom he loses for the flimsiest of reasons.The story in the main has Irons and Meryl Streep back in Victorian England. She is "the French lieutenant's woman" and is shunned by the village for having had an affair with the married man. She now moons over her absent lover and waits for the return that will never be realized.Irons is an independently wealthy naturalist who visits the village in search of fossils and finds love for the darkly mysterious Streep, although Irons himself has just married into a family of some repute. He divorces his wife -- shocking! -- and gives up his status as an "honorable gentleman." He gives Streep money, and later follows her to London, loses her, finds her three years later, and she rejects him because she has now become a liberated woman.There is a parallel story that doesn't get much time. It takes place today. Irons and Streep, both married, are having a fling during the shooting of a film. Again, Irons falls in love, but for Streep the encounter was far more casual and despite his efforts, she takes off happily with her French husband.The only Fowles novel I've read is "The Magus", which follows a similar trajectory -- man is coerced into a woman's thrall and is then deliberately and openly betrayed by her. The traditional Madia Gond, a tribe in India, had a custom called the ghotul in which adolescent boys and girls lived in the same house and played musical beds each night, whether they wanted to or not. The elders of the tribe claimed that this practice was intended to "cure them of love." I begin to wonder if Fowles isn't on the same trip. You know, "Most friendship is feigning; most loving mere folly"? Jeremy Irons as the uptight Victorian naturalist manqué never steps wrong. He ALWAYS never steps wrong. Meryl Streep. If you've seen her in later character roles like "The Iron Lady", you may not remember how lovely, pale, and fragile she could be in her earlier films. She's a splendid actress, even though make up has given her a mop of dark reddish hair so massive that it may have its own time zones. And both of the actors are perfectly capable of overcoming the sometimes stilted dialog: "I have taken unpardonable advantage of your condition. Forgive me." There are some allusions to Darwin but I don't think they amount to very much.It was directed by Karel Reisz. He directed the colossal art house flop called "Weeds," which was saved from complete obscurity only by my own stellar performance as an extra. Boy, did I establish atmosphere, or what? A prisoner smoking with a cigarette holder, a masterful touch! Here, whatever else we may say about the film, Reisz and his photographer, Freddie Francis, have paid such close attention to composition, values, rich colors, and camera placement that every shot is almost a painting in itself.I'm compelled to recommend it, although I wish the endings had been different and at least ONE of the Ironses finally wound up with one of the Streeps, but no dice. It's a story of lost loves, along the lines of "Wuthering Heights", but I wasn't bored for a moment.

preppy-3 Charles Henry Smithson (Jeremy Irons) falls in love with outcast Sarah (Meryl Streep) in 1800s England. In the present day Mike (Irons again) and Anna (Streep again) are doing a movie about their tragic love affair and the movie jumps back and forth between the stories.Incredibly dull movie. Streep and Irons are fantastic in all their roles but the script is dull, the movie drags on forever and the parallels between the two stories are pointless and groaningly obvious. I have nothing against slowly paced movies (I love "Howard's End" and "Room With a View") as long as they're interesting. This isn't. You don't care one bit for any of these characters or their situations. I caught this snoozer in a theatre and had trouble staying awake! This is one of those "prestige" movies that critics fall all over themselves praising but audiences stay away from. This was a bomb at the box office and has (rightfully) been forgotten. This gets a 2 just for Streep and Irons.