Ralph Fiennes’ “The Invisible Woman,” about Ellen Ternan (Felicity Jones), the failed actress and secret mistress that Victorian novelist Charles Dickens hid from the public for seven years, got a very proper reception at its world premiere Saturday at the Telluride Film Festival. The film, which Sony Pictures Classics will launch with a limited opening on December 25, received 25 seconds of sustained applause, followed by a Q&A with Fiennes and 2011 National Book Critics Circle Criticism Award winner Geoff Dyer, for which virtually every audience member stayed in their seats.
Dyer compared the film to “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (which had Meryl Streep as a Victorian Other Woman), but in its historical authenticity, intellectual ambition and rendering of a repressed era, it’s also a bit like David Cronenberg’s 2011 Telluride film “A Dangerous Method,” which earned a Golden Globe nomination for Viggo Mortensen as Carl Jung.
Fiennes, who directed and stars as Dickens, plays a role that’s way more fun than Mortensen’s Jung.
He’s an exuberant creator of doorstop novels, rollicking public readings, and lively theatrical productions, and an admirable crusader to save downfallen women but also a selfish bastard who treated the women in his life like characters in his fictions, which he could manipulate at will.
While both the film and Fiennes’ performance as Dickens could be awards magnets, his Dickens could be a tricky role to sell to Oscar voters while a character of irresistible appeal, he is also capable of being quite cruel to his wife Katey (Charissa Shearer).
“He was cruel,” Fiennes admitted, “but when people are unhappy in marriage, they are often cruel, I think.” The film also dramatizes Dickens’ guilt, his struggle to care for his mistress, his family, and his immense reputation.
