Growing up in the stultifying confines of an Orthodox Jewish
community in mid-19th century London, Rosina (Minnie Driver at her
most luminous) somehow picks up enough sexual tricks to astonish the
first man to make love to her, her married employer, Mr. Cavendish.
“Where did you learn such things?” he gasps during a postcoital
embrace.
As Rosina’s extraordinary fate unfolds in “The Governess,”
the real wonder becomes how British filmmaker Sandra Goldbacher was
able to write and direct such an accomplished, touching and original
movie her first time out. She comes up with a plausible if made-up
scenario for how Rosina, by being at the right place at the right
time, contributes to the invention of photography.
Goldbacher has an advantage over the Brontes in knowing that
succeeding generations of women would prosper by using their
intelligence. Yet this knowledge never colors the behavior of her
female characters.
Rosina may seem modern, but only by the standards of the 1840s.
She doubts herself because she has been told that women have no head
for anything scientific, and as a result she is denied the credit she
deserves.
Had Rosina remained in the tight-knit
Sephardic Jewish enclave of her youth, where women are not allowed
even to pray with men, she wouldn’t have had the chance to invent
anything.
The unexpected death of her beloved father, who leaves behind a
pile of debts,
forces her to advertise herself as a governess.
She arrives at the Cavendish estate on a remote Scottish
island to care for the wealthy couple’s spoiled daughter. Fearing
anti-Semitism, Rosina pretends to be
Christian, giving herself the ironic name Mary Blackchurch.
The look of “The Governess” shifts with Rosina’s reversal
of fortune. Her childhood home is portrayed in shades of magenta and
gold (accompanied by a lilting soundtrack of sacred Jewish music). As if to match the landscape,
the Cavendish furnishings are black, gray and winter green. When the
family assembles around the table, they resemble a Munch painting
with their dour looks.
Rosina literally is drawn to the light of her employer’s
pioneering experiments with photography. Using a camera obscura,
Cavendish (Tom Wilkinson, “The Full Monty”) can get an image on a
piece of paper, but it quickly evaporates. She volunteers as his
assistant and — voila — comes up with the ideas of a darkroom and
using salt to fix the prints.
Amid all this creation, how could these two not get turned
on? Their affair is shown from the woman’s point of view (something
male directors rarely do). Rosina aches for Cavendish to touch her.
When he does, tying an apron around her waist so they can work, the
sexual tension is palpable. Wilkinson convincingly shows Cavendish’s
torment over his desire for his young aide.
Rosina is a wonderfully rich role, and Driver gives it
everything she has. It’s her best work yet. She displays a
heartbreaking vulnerability in the romantic scenes and a toughness
and intelligence in the darkroom that furthers the case for Rosina as
the mother of photography.