Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman is easily one of the best films I’ve seen all year, and the only shame is that we’ve got to wait until February until it’s released in the UK.
The film has been very well received by critics since its Telluride and Toronto debuts, and has been continuing on the festival circuit in recent months – you can read our review from the LFF here – building momentum nicely in the run-up to the Oscars.
Fiennes is magnificent as Charles Dickens, and Felicity Jones is simply superb opposite him as his on-screen muse, Nelly Ternan, with whom Dickens shared a decade-long secret relationship.
With its release on our shores on the horizon, Lionsgate has launched a beautiful new quad poster, and a terrific new trailer to go along with it.
Nelly (Felicity Jones), a happily-married mother and schoolteacher, is haunted by her past. Her memories, provoked by remorse and guilt, take us back in time to follow the story of her relationship with Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) with whom she discovered an exciting but fragile complicity.
Dickens – famous, controlling and emotionally isolated within his success – falls for Nelly, who comes from a family of actors. The theatre is a vital arena for Dickens – a brilliant amateur actor – a man more emotionally coherent on the page or on stage, than in life. As Nelly becomes the focus of Dickens’ passion and his muse, for both of them secrecy is the price, and for Nelly a life of “invisibility”.
Joining Fiennes and Jones is a great ensemble, led by Kristin Scott Thomas, Tom Hollander, Joanna Scanlan, Perdita Weeks, Amanda Hale, Tom Burke, John Kavanagh, and Michael Marcus.
Fiennes directs from a script by Abi Morgan (Shame, The Iron Lady), who adapts the original book, The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, by Claire Tomalin
The Invisible Woman will begin its limited release in the US on Christmas Day, before expanding across the States in successive weeks. Here in the UK, it will arrive in cinemas on 7th February, in perfect time for the Valentine’s weekend a week later, and by all accounts it is an absolute must-see.
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