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Overview
User Rating:
Director:
Writers:
Jean Rhys (novel)
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (screenplay)
more
Release Date:
25 October 1981 (USA) more
Awards:
Nominated for BAFTA Film Award. Another 2 wins & 1 nomination more
User Comments:
Bleaker than the real-life version. more (7 total)
Cast
(Cast overview, first billed only)| Alan Bates | ... | H.J. Heidler | |
| Maggie Smith | ... | Lois Heidler | |
| Isabelle Adjani | ... | Marya 'Mado' Zelli | |
| Anthony Higgins | ... | Stephan Zelli | |
| Pierre Clémenti | ... | Théo the Pornographer | |
| Suzanne Flon | ... | Mme. Hautchamp | |
| Daniel Mesguich | ... | Pierre Schlamovitz | |
| Sheila Gish | ... | Anna | |
| Armelia McQueen | ... | Night Club Singer | |
| Wiley Wood | ... | Cairn | |
| Virginie Thévenet | ... | Madmoiselle Chardin | |
| Daniel Chatto | ... | Guy | |
| Bernice Stegers | ... | Miss Nicholson | |
| Paulita Sedgwick | ... | Esther | |
| Sébastien Floche | ... | Edouard Hautchamp |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
USA:101 min
Color:
Sound Mix:
Certification:
UK:18 (video rating) | UK:X (original rating) | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Singapore:M18 | Sweden:11 | USA:R | Ireland:18
Filming Locations:
Company:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
The book written by Jean Rhys was originally titled "Postures" when it was published in London in 1928 by Chatto and Windus. When the U.S. publishers Simon and Schuster published it in the United States, the name was changed to "Quartet". more
Movie Connections:
Featured in The Wandering Company (1984) (TV) more
Soundtrack:
Arabesque Valsante more
FAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (7 total)
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Abandoned in Paris with no work permit and no savings, when her art-dealing (illegal) Polish husband is sent to prison, Marya Zelli (Isabelle Adjani) accepts the hospitality of the Heidlers, Lois and H.J.(as Lois invariably calls him) which, probably inevitably, involves her providing bed service to H.J. The video box describes the Heidlers as a "freethinking British couple" - if you can accept a couple, with such limited self-awareness and inability to talk through their problems, as freethinkers.
The film is based on the novel by Jean Rhys, based on her own experiences with Ford Madox Ford who presumably had more going for him than H.J., or else he wouldn't be in all those books on the literature of the twenties. Apparently Ford helped Rhys with her novel, and after he tired of her body got her a ghost-writing job on the Riviera. Rhys' husband was out of prison and had abandoned her before she moved in with the Fords. Presumably her major motivation was her devotion to her writing. Marya Zelli, in the film is not a writer, and she stays in Paris because her husband is still in prison. She says more than once to Lois that if given 100 Fr she would disappear (back to England where she could legally work?) but she gets 250 Fr just before moving in with the Heidlers when she sells almost everything she has to the hotel concierge.
Thus while the film is of the desperation of no choice, Marya has in fact fewer options than the real-life Rhys, and the film ending where Marya is thrown on the mercy of her husband's acquaintance from prison, is very bleak, unlike Rhys' fate of being ejected to a writing job.