Housekeeping, clips, and reviews (oh my)

First, you might notice something different about the blog's landscape. Now that June is nearly busting out all over, and the 2008 Tonys are rapidly approaching, we've removed our '07 Tonys tribute to Jennifer Ehle from the "News" section. *sigh* The link to the acceptance speech video goodness is now located under "Essentials" for your repeated viewing pleasure.

Next, here are some great clips (some new, some old, now in one convenient place) from Before the Rains. Number 3 is of particular interest, as you can see.







Here's the latest from the critics:

• A not-very-nice review at Red Orbit is forgivable because of its reference to "an impressive performance by Ehle as Henry's betrayed wife."
• There are mixed feelings at Seattle PI and The Seattle Times. The latter explains:

  [...] While the casting couldn't be much better, there are only so many ways the talented Roache can register Moores' upper-class twitness before he turns into a Monty Python doll. As Moores' suspicious wife, Jennifer Ehle is slightly more sympathetic. [...]

• Past the Popcorn admires the beautiful cinematography and praises the technical merits of the film, if not the screenplay.
• Here's one blogger's opinion of the cast:

  [...] The acting overall was good. Rahul Bose does a good job of being the conflicted assistant– stuck between the world of his traditional family and his English boss. Nandita Das was surprisingly effective in her minuscule role of paramour. Linus Roache was good, but the actors who played his wife (Jennifer Ehle), son and the banker, were just as good if not better. [...]

• Another celebrity blogger from ABC 13 not only got the see Rains in Houston, but had his picture taken with Linus Roache, who was in town promoting the film. His verdict:

  [...] It's a very good film, and is beautifully shot. If you are looking for something a little more grounded in reality after Indy, you might want to check it out.

Other Rains-related tidbits:

• Santosh Sivan compares the arts of cinematography and directing at India Journal.
• There's a discussion of Before the Rains and colonialism in this review from The Stranger.

Finally, Edwin has alerted us to the fact that a new Region 2 DVD of The Camomile Lawn has just been released (May 19). If you don't already have a copy, now's the time!

P.S. For a slew of coincidences + a bit of CB hilarity on the side, read this article at The Daily Mail. More information can be found at Playbill.

Drama Desks on now

• The Drama Desk awards are on now; you can watch the live webcast from Theatermania. Windows Media Player is required. See BroadwayWorld forumers' predictions. Coast of Utopia has ten nominations.

• On Nandita Das' site, there are some photos proving the existence of Before the Rains (formerly named Kerala or Road to the Sky). We've had our doubts. Ms Das' assistant says that the film might be released at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is running from September 6 to 15, but this isn't confirmed yet.

• There's an amusing quote in the New Zealand Herald's interview with Mary Wesley's son, Toby Eady, about costume anachronisms in The Camomile Lawn. So to speak.

• The Tonys polling continues at Off-Off Blogway; again les soeurs Bakounine are neck and neck.
  

• If you're feeling bereft at the closing of Coast of Utopia, think how it must be from the other side of the stage. Martha Plimpton sums up the experience in a moving post (publicly viewable, yay). Hope she doesn't mind me sharing this beautiful passage from Shipwreck that she quotes in conclusion:

  We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but we think there is something wrong with this picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfullness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected. But there is no such place. That's why it's called Utopia.

Camomile Lawn DVD review

This is the first review for the Region 1 Camomile Lawn DVD, from Metronews.

The Camomile Lawn
Acorn/Paradox DVD box set
*** 1 / 2 (out of five)

This 1992 miniseries adaptation of Mary Wesley's novel is set mostly in wartime Britain, a world recognizable from movies and TV — ration books and bomb shelters, cardboard gas mask cases, air raid wardens, blackout curtains, black markets and last, desperate leaves before heading into battle.

The overdue innovation was to show how war and death changed society, and young people, irrevocably. There's a case to be made that the sexual revolution didn't begin in the '60s with a demographic bulge of restless young people, but 20 years earlier with their parents, eagerly seeking out love, sex and comfort with the reasonable certainty that they might not be alive to deal with the consequences.

Jennifer Ehle and Tara Fitzgerald play cousins who watch the complacent moral certainties of the upper middle classes, in which they've been confidently raised, get shredded under the pressures of war. Ehle's Calypso, the beauty of their circle, admits that she loves the war — the thrill and adventure, the abundance of young men in uniform, the sense of life being lived to its fullest. Her quieter cousin Polly (Fitzgerald) also "liberates" herself in the new wartime society, discovering that she's in love with twin brothers, who seem content to share her.

Almost everyone, in fact, ends up breaking away from social convention by the time the first bombs of the Blitz start dropping, including the girls' aunt Helena and her stuffy husband Richard, whose marriage becomes a very open one after they swap partners with a Jewish refugee couple. Almost all of the characters inhabit a world where breeding and manners are supposed to compensate for pathological rudeness and self-centredness, a tone that Kenneth Taylor captures very nicely from Wesley's novel. While it might be hard to sympathize with Wesley's characters — Calypso is particularly heartless — the truth of her depiction of life during wartime is hard to deny.

Rick McGinnis/Metro Toronto

US Camomile Lawn DVD already available?

There's a Region 1 DVD of The Camomile Lawn for sale on eBay expiring March 30th.

It also appears that you can buy the Region 1 Camomile Lawn DVD directly from Acorn, the distributor. It's a fair bit more expensive than the eBay version though.

[edit: Frenchies, set your VCRs! The River King is on Canal Plus Décalé at 20:50 tonight, which is in like three hours. It'll be rebroadcast - dates later]

This is cheating

Blogging without doing any work. It's fantastic! Here's a new batch of photos sent by Josie (who also has a new site about actress Kelly Reilly, check it out).


Click to enlarge.

This batch includes:

5 enlargened Philadelphia Story stills

5 Wilde premiere photos

2 Tartuffe stills

1 loverly shot from Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth

2 photos from the Camomile Lawn days (one is shown above)

4 photos from the 1998 BAFTAs (aka the "she woz robbed" BAFTAs)

Why yes, even more Camomile Lawn

Since it's unofficial Camomile Lawn week. This is by Greg Quill of the Toronto Star on June 13th, 1993. Spot the errors.

*Addictive: The Camomile Lawn, a TV adaptation by the Australian Broadcasting Commission and British TV's daring independent Channel 4 of Mary Wesley's sprawling novel about an extended family and intricate sexual liaisons before, during, and after World War II, is thrilling, seductive stuff, even if its characters and their values are as unusual to average North American tastes as garlic snails, and rabbit in mustard sauce.

Or maybe not. The complicated sexual pairings - twins who become their cousin's simultaneous lovers after her husband is killed; a gentrified couple (Felicity Kendal and Paul Eddington) who, after years of convenient marriage, agree to swap partners with a brilliant German Jewish concert violinist (Oliver Cotton) and his flaxen-haired Bavarian hausfrau (Trudy Weiss), both deemed suspicious aliens by the Establishment; the lingering passion between a thwarted lover and a much younger and very damaged girl who pushed a coast guard watcher over a Cornish cliff because he threatened her with his "pink snake" - would be unbelievable (except, perhaps, in Hollywood) if the pressures of war, and longing suppressed by the British class system, weren't so well preserved as central elements of this extraordinary script.

I couldn't begin to explain the convoluted threads of this addictive, five-part TV saga, which premieres in CBC-TV's "adult zone" tomorrow at 11 p.m., except to suggest that the feel, scent and location of the camomile lawn in the title are key to understanding all the mysteries and psycho-sexual intrigue in the plot.

Claire Bloom, Jennifer Ehle, and Tara Fitzgerald also star.

Brother, Austrian, brunette. Five points for enthusiasm, though.

Camomile Lawn reviews

No prizes for guessing what DVD just arrived in the mail yesterday (yay!). Can't find many full-length reviews, just lots of smallish ones.

From a Richard Johnson appreciation page

5 stars. One of those little gems that creep up on you. A strong ensemble piece driven by the great British theatre director, Peter Hall, this five-hour mini-series follows the lives of about a dozen people from the eve of World War ll through the war. The final hour of the series catches up with them in present day. The cast is a most formidable one, all the younger actors are exceptional, but what makes it most interesting is to see how the older actors have each taken on the various characteristics of their young counterparts from the past. The people the young characters have grown into are real extensions of them. Most of the cast was unfamiliar to me with the exception of Claire Bloom (who is wonderful as always), Rosemary Harris and Tara Fitzgerald (also both wonderful). But the actresses, Rebecca Hall and Jennifer Ehle are definitely two new talents to watch out for! Oh yes, Richard Johnson is extremely enjoyable as the surly but lovable present-day Oliver.

Total DVD

This 1992 series is largely remembered as the TV debut of voluptuous Jennifer Ehle, who along with co-star Tara Fitzgerald gets plenty of chances to disrobe. A clichéd tale of a family torn apart by the Second World War, the story of five cousins from the Cuthbertson family is told in flashback. As war breaks out, upper lips are not the only things that remain stiff, and much ghastly beastliness of the bedroom variety ensues. Totalling 264 minutes on two discs, this is decent value for money and will entertain lovers of steamy costume drama. Picture is a little grainy but bright and colourful, and sound is clear

Buyer reviews from EasyCinema

Most folk will have seen this and enjoyed this on TV when first released. I found it well acted and paced the first time around. My overall appreciation on this second viewing was even more pronounced. Sadly not many TV productions are in this class.

From Memorable UK TV

Period drama serial. The convoluted and surprisingly explicit love lives of a group of cousins just before and during World War II. The series garnered quite a bit of controversy (and publicity) thanks to its frankness with language and sex scenes.

Finally, not exactly a review, but an article about sex on the small screen. The (rather frank) dialogue from one of Ms Ehle's scenes is quoted. Click through to see for yourselves!

Globe and Mail Camomile Lawn review

A touchstone for memories of youth
This provocative five-hour drama chronicles the deliciously tangled lives of a group of friends and relatives who spend a summer together on the eve of the Second World War

John Haslett Cuff
14 June 1993
The Globe and Mail
All material copyright Thomson Canada Limited or its licensors. All rights reserved.

There are many pleasures to be found in watching the sexy and beautifully executed British mini-series The Camomile Lawn, which begins on CBC-TV tonight and continues for the next four weeks. Among its more provocative aspects is a sometimes shocking moral complexity that touches on child sexual abuse and promiscuity. There are also assorted shots of full- frontal nudity and some occasionally explicit language.

But both nudity and frankly adult language are used sparingly and with appropriately dramatic effect and, though titillating, they hardly account for the mini-series' overall appeal. Much more to the point, the series' unfailing intelligence and morally ambiguous revelations of character are relatively rare in the black-and-white simplicity of most North American television drama.

Based on the novel by Mary Wesley and adapted for television by one of the finest screenwriters in the world, Ken Taylor (The Jewel in the Crown) , the disingenuously named five-hour drama chronicles the deliciously tangled lives of a group of young cousins, aunts, uncles and friends whose last summer together in Cornwall on the eve of the Second World War becomes the touchstone for their shared memories of youth and departed innocence.

The specially planted herb lawn, notable for its strong scent and medicinal properties, is a striking symbol for those moments in their lives which they relive as they gather 40 years later for the funeral of Max Erstweiler. An "outsider," Max was an Austrian refugee violinist who, along with his indulgent wife Monica, brought music (literally and figuratively) into the otherwise rather typically stiff, bourgeois British lives of these characters. His romantic antics and the moral anarchy of war freed all of them to enjoy fuller lives than they might otherwise have done.

Although the war forms both a backdrop and a vivid context for the behaviour of the various characters, this is by no means an obviously romantic or sentimental excursion into the past. There are no theatrical heroics and tragedies underlined or exploited for cheap effect. Instead there is a gay, cynical tone that is at once charming and distancing both for the viewers and the characters themselves.

Sex is a practical rather than a moral issue; love and passion are there in abundance but without histrionics (or strings) because life and love are obviously all too precarious (almost too precarious to even speak of) in a country at war.

Of course, war is hell - at least on the battlefield. But for these assorted characters it is also exciting in a way that life will never be again. The characters - particularly the women - take full advantage of it to explore their sexuality in ways that might not even be considered under normally repressive (for women) conditions.

A large ensemble cast plays characters ranging in age from about 10 to 60 plus, and each one is powerfully affected and - in most cases - liberated by the events accompanying the outbreak of war. Felicity Kendal, Paul Eddington (Yes, Minister) and Claire Bloom will be familiar to many viewers but the younger members of the cast, who carry much of the action, will not. Jennifer Ehle is especially memorable as Calypso and Rebecca Hall is exceptional as the youngster Sophy who, more poignantly than anyone, represents the loss of innocence.

The series was directed by Peter Hall and exquisitely photographed by Ernie Vincze. It is a co-production between Channel 4 and the Australian Broadcasting Corp.