The Rector's Wife

I can't improve on Christabel's review. This production is excellent in every regard - thoughtful, sensitive, moving. A very human story. Lindsay Duncan is superb. Highly recommended.

Joanna Trollope's novel "The Rector's Wife" has been made into a inspirational and moving film. Centering on the family struggles of a vicar who refuses to listen to his wife and children, this film shows the slow decay of a stagnant marriage. Lindsay Duncan's portrayal of Anna lights up the screen, showing a emotional yet understated performance. Jonathan Coy plays Peter, a man who has shut himself off from the world to avoid the pain of failure while his wife and two children pay the price. The story is told with a sensitivity and clarity that is lacking with most productions today. Finally available on DVD in the spring, "The Rector's Wife" is yet another great production from across the pond.

I was so impressed by Lindsay Duncan in the 1997 History of Tom Jones, in which she played a completely different type of role, that I searched for more of her work. This search led me to this exemplary drama, one that truly gets to the heart of a critical 'women's issue' : that of service wives, and the expectations they are quite unjustifiably subjected to with no real regard to their own wishes or desires. Duncan is absolutely superb in portraying a woman who is only slowly, and at times painfully, coming to grips with how far she has been distanced from her true self. The rest of the cast, particularly Prunella Scales, who I'd only known from Fawlty Towers, are superb. Her children, her husband, her would-be lover and her actual lover all deliver understated but poignant depictions of a life in which no one ever seems to get exactly what one wants: an astonishingly realistic representation of modern life.