"Intriguing"

Because a day without River King reviews is like a day without rain. This one's from The Chronicle Herald of Halifax; the film scores 2.5 stars of 4.

The River King (Thriller, 14A, 100 minutes)
Director Nick Willing’s adaptation of the Alice Hoffman novel about the death of a student at a U.S. prep school combines frigid Nova Scotia location shots with intriguing plot twists, as small town cop Abel Grey (Edward Burns) tries to solve the crime no one else wants to know about. The film’s conflict comes from the friction between the snooty staff and students at the school (portrayed by both King’s-Edgehill in Windsor and University of King’s College in Halifax) and the plebian cops who are told to look the other way. Adult leads Burns and Jennifer Ehle run the emotional gamut in their roles, but young actors Thomas Gibson as the doomed student August and Rachel Lefevre as his friend Carlin give the film the necessary dramatic juice to offset The River King’s chilly scenes of winter.

Summerfolk

A review of Summerfolk with a photo, brought to you by Komisar's Curtain Raisers. Here's the relevant bit, as usual.

These new rich lack the culture of the aristocrats they are emulating. The lawyer Sergei Bassov is given life by Roger Allam as a flippant, anti-intellectual with a lower-middle class British accent and demeanor. His wife Varya (the excellent Jennifer Ehle) is bored and dissatisfied. She looks forward with secret hope to the visit of Shalimov, the famous writer she idolized as a student. But he is cynical and can't write, because he can't understand what's going on in the world.

Chuffed

From April this year in the Evening Standard, a brief article reporting that "'Reclusive' Jen" was "chuffed" to have free lodgings in London.

In more recent news, there's yet another review of The River King from Terminal City. Much along the same lines as the others.

The Interview

Download* the entire interview in zip format. Alternatively, download each part separately:

Part 1 (career & profession: 12 pages)

Part 2 (specific works: 7 pages)

Parts 3-5 (motherhood & family; geography, nationality & accent; interests & personality: 6 pages)

Parts 6-7 (miscellaneous & silly questions; inevitable Colin Firth/Kevin Spacey fangirl questions: 4 pages).

There are also HTML versions of the files thanks to Google cache. These do not require you to download any files or programs, but are not as easy to read as the originals above, because of formatting problems. Part 1, Part 2, Parts 3-5, Parts 6-7.

Finally you can read HTML excerpts of the interview at AustenBlog and BlogCritics. These are only a fraction of the full interview though.

A bit of an explanation for new visitors: earlier this year, we sought question submissions from fans which were then sent to Ms Ehle (read the FAQ to see how this came about). This is the result: 100+ answers verbatim direct from her to you, published in the same PDF format in which they were returned. There are some links to things mentioned in the questions in the annotations post below. If you'd like to join in our fannish squeeing, drop by the forum.

This just has to be said in public, even though it's the understatement of the century: Jennifer Ehle, you are a legend!

If you're interested in expressing your gratitude yourself, have a look at our thank-you project.

The Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License below is so that anyone (read: journalists) who quotes or reproduces the interview has to attribute it to the site.





*Thanks to Colin Firth 24/7 for hosting these files! Much better than Rapidshare. They've also provided links to the programs you need to unzip and read the PDFs: Adobe Reader and Zip Genius

Camomile Lawn review

This one's a bit raunchy, so skip it if you're, er, delicate.

Sex Drama On Homefront
Jim Schembri
11 February 1993
The Age
Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd

Sunday. The Camomile Lawn, Channel 2, 9.30pm

Delicacy and restraint are not the strong points of The Camomile Lawn.

As elegant as its title sounds, and as beautiful as this wartime drama looks (the Brits' endless love for recreating their past on the tube is astonishing), its main theme is sex. It is also about growth, commitment, compromise, loss and love - but mainly sex.

Set in Cornwall and London, the drama (based on the book by Mary Wesley) follows the closely knit and often tense relations between the joyous Polly (Tara Fitzgerald, from the movie Hear My Song), her brother Walter (Ben Walden), the young, impressionable Sophy (Rebecca Hall), the brash, sex-obsessed Oliver (Toby Stephens) and the extraordinarily beautiful Calypso (Jennifer Ehle), the subject of Oliver's attentions and whose breasts have a prominent role in the series.

Looking over the clan is Aunt Helena (Felicity Kendal) and Uncle Richard (Paul Eddington). Their lives also involve some Jewish friends who initially are treated as illegal aliens. Uncle Richard uses his political connections to free them, something which benefits not only them but Aunt Helena's lust.

If Kendal was wanting to escape the sweet stigma of doing The Good Life and all those those ads for margarine (sorry, can't remember the brand - can you?) she does it here. Like Calypso, her sexuality prompts her to do things that are less than noble.

Paul Eddington, obviously keen to shed his persona from Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, does. As crusty, ageing Uncle Richard, he walks (or rather limps) through the series, voicing his disbelief at things with the phrase "I ask you" and going on about his artificial leg, which he lost, as he puts it, "in the first show".

It's not gripping drama but it is a quality attention-grabber with some surprisingly sharp left turns and some very frank dialogue. Those expecting Upstairs, Downstairs be warned.

Dame Rosemary Harris

An IMDB poster is advocating that Rosemary Harris be made a dame for her services to drama. He encourages people to nominate her via the Cabinet Office. Don't know how her being an American resident for the past half-century will go down, but it's worth a shot.

[edit: link fixed]

Operation Enduring Freedom Gratitude

This project is going ahead. Go to the November post for more details about how to submit your message, deadlines, formats, etc.

If your name begins with a J and ends with an e-n-n-i-f-e-r E-h-l-e, go here and don't look down. Pretty please.

Everyone else, continue reading.
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(She doesn't read the blog, but better to be cautious)

So, I already wrote a letter thanking Ms Ehle for her time and patience in doing the interview for us, and for her candour, humour and insight. However, was thinking that perhaps you would like to express your thanks personally. The idea is an electronic collage to be sent for her birthday: you can send in scans or photos of a message for her, and we'll arrange them into a digital file. Messages can be anything from a scanned handwritten note to a photo of an elaborate artwork.

The thing is, this will only succeed if enough people are interested because it'd be really pathetic to send it with only, say, three messages. So for now, we're only seeking signs of interest. Give your name/initials/nickname, country and e-mail address in the comments below, or write to jenniferehle@gmail.com . If there is enough interest, we'll contact you and publish a proper post to get more submissions.

Whether or not this project works out, we'll be sending a physical card and gifts on behalf of the blog and its readers.

Obligatory Meryl Streep reference

Paul Bryant of eFilmCritic gives The River King 3 stars.

Teaching there is the concerned Betsy (played by Jennifer Ehle), who happens to be engaged to the Dean, and (naturally) during the course of the investigation, happens to get involved with Abel – plotting the points of the movie’s first love triangle.

But that’s later. First, she proves her talent as a photographer and first-class Meryl Streep impersonator, and shows a somewhat nervous affection for her husband-to-be, who may just have some ulterior motives.
...
The River King has interesting things to say about guilt, and less interesting things to say about ghosts, but it's a really different film in a time when so many mainstream movies look like links from the same sausage press. It’s by no means great, but see it before you see something you’ll truly regret, like oh, say, The Fog.

And from the Toronto Star on October 27th...

The River King 14A

Part murder mystery, part supernatural thriller, part psychological drama, The River King is adapted for the screen by Nick Willing from a novel by Alice Hoffman. Edward Burns plays Abel Grey, a tormented cop who appears to be projecting his own tragedy on the death of Gus Pierce, a student boarding at the local private school. Pierce's body is found in the river under the ice. His fellow cops rule the death a suicide, but they appear to be in cahoots with the school over something or other. Photos taken by a teacher, Betty Chase, seem to show a ghost. The male students engage in bloody rituals at night in the woods. Abel sees a little boy on the riverbank whom no one else sees. It's all very suspicious. Unfortunately The River King gets silly just when it should get profound. SW

Now Toronto is equally enthusiastic. Likewise Jeff Musgrave of Exclaim.

More eBayness

The Real Thing Playbill

The Real Thing poster

Plays and Players magazine from September 1995 with Jennifer Ehle on the cover.

That Photo

Vanity Fair

Interview annotations

Links to things mentioned in The Interview. These are mostly from the fansite. That site also has her filmography, or more accurately her everythingography, where you can see the details of her lesser known works.

4. Rosemary Harris' The Royal Family

6. Rosemary Harris' first performance. Also in the article recently posted. Can't find the Streetcar Named Desire performance she refers to, since it says Ms Harris did that play in 1973.

9. On her "chromosome glitch" (video) and also in text

11. On "doing things" (same video as in #9)

12. On classical training, see ITV transcript and Flicks interview

13. On Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, from EW

16. "Strong, independent" (my mistake here, it was the director of Possession not Sunshine who said that) from Virginia Pilot

18. Rosemary Harris' mood changes when playing different roles

19. On her script snobbery

24. On not feeling comfortable as Christabel (same as in #16)

25. On the book of acting (same as in #12)

27. On wanting to write

32. An example of avoiding the actor stereotype

35. On actors being oracles (see Profiles - Jennifer Ehle: Wilde at Heart...")

41. Rosemary Harris' "gills"

49. On admiring Maggie Smith

60. Video of Brodie's Script scene that she mentions in her answer. See "He Can't Write".

89. On Tracy Lord being the only role that would lure her away from her family

93. On never imagining she'd be married

96. On rootlessness (see "Jennifer Ehle on Melissa")

100. On learning French

107. On being tone deaf (see "Power Jen")

108. On not having a very strong sense of self (same as in #9)

110. On visiting a Benedictine convent and Cuba

116. On being a "self-confessed thriller fan" (see "Jennifer Ehle on Melissa")

124. The driving nude quote (see "Everybody's Talking About.......Jennifer Ehle")

126. The misinterpreted welling up about Cate Blanchett's success

131. Attending Queen's College

Masquerade, paper faces on parade

There's a photo of Rosemary Harris at the Acting Company's Annual Black & White Masquerade Ball on October 24th at the Starlight Roof of the Waldrof-Astoria Hotel, where she presented the John Houseman Award to Jack O'Brien. Click on "View Photos", she's in the second one.

"La bella Valerie"

Bella indeed. Here's the Spanish site for Sunshine. Click on "Video" for a clip of Jennifer Ehle and Ralph Fiennes. The photo above is from the "Galería" and there a couple more of her in the "Personajes" section.

You probably don't want to know

Norman Wilner for Metro Toronto reviews The River King.

Ah well.

eBay roundup

Playbill from the Neil Simon benefit. There are 25 pages with headshots and profiles of the stars, including both Jennifer Ehle and Rosemary Harris. Ships to the US/Canada and elsewhere if you e-mail the seller. Starting at $1.49 USD.

May 1997 Harper's Bazaar magazine. Ships worldwide, starts at $3.00 USD.

November 1997 Empire magazine. Ships worldwide, now at GBP 1.70. Closes in an hour or so.

Philadelphia Story programme. Ships to the UK, North and South America, Australia, EU countries and Japan. Starts at GBP 5.00.

"The most beautiful girl"

From a Playbill interview with Earle Hyman.

Moss Hart wrote and directed the 1952 comedy The Climate of Eden, "which was wonderful," states Hyman, "but didn't run. Moss went to London to find, according to the script, 'the most beautiful girl in the world.' He brought back Rosemary Harris, who was divine! We all liked her, but didn't think she was 'the most beautiful girl.' Then, at the run-through, we watched from the wings, as she made her entrance and, having done nothing to her face, she was 'the most beautiful girl in the world.' She's heaven! One of the greatest living actresses!"

Amen to that.

But wait there's more

Some of these require paid subscription or free registration; for the latter, try BugMeNot.

Katherine Monk, Vancouver Sun (paid).

Jennifer Ehle as Betsy is also intriguing, but in an entirely different way. Part of her charisma has to do with her uncanny resemblance to Meryl Streep (though she is no relation, and actually happens to be the daughter of RADA-trained Rosemary Harris). The rest has to do with her vacant, euphoric stare into infinity.

It's like watching a kitten in a post-catnip trance: You're never quite sure what she's going to do next.

Chris Knight, National Post (not online).

He also finds time to fall for Ehle's character, who breathily says things like, "No ... we mustn't ... do this ... it's wrong ... we can't," accompanied by heavy petting

Susan Walker, Toronto Star (free registration).

The overnight romance that develops between Betsy and Abel is another complication. Like the evergreen trees in the foreground that look as if they just arrived from the nursery, the vaseline-lensed sex act they perform immediately after Abel opens his door is best categorized as movie apparatus.

Lee Ann Gillan, Halifax Daily News (free).

Jennifer Ehle (Pride and Prejudice), usually so bright and lively in her work, is wasted here in a mousy, pointless role as a teacher who falls for Abel.

Lucas De Stefano Meira Henriques, Topo (audience review).

Bom suspense! um policial com tom sobrenatural... merece ser visto! principalmente pela persença de Ed Burns.

"The River Duke"

Faint praise and 2.5 stars for The River King from David Lane of the Globe and Mail. He thought the film "never quite admirable but always commendable".

Ehle, who doubles as Abel's love interest, keeps injecting her performance with a Meryl Streep-ish half-smile, disconcerting at first but ultimately rather endearing.

And if you're curious about this post's title:

I'm not suggesting for a moment that The River King is worthy of that regal title. At best it's The River Duke, but still a decent chap, and definitely more entertaining than half the fools at today's court.

More minor Rosemary Harris news from Playbill: she's going to present the John Houseman Award to director Jack O'Brien at the Acting Company's annual Black & White Masquerade Ball on October 24th.

Muddled mystery

Oops, forgot it was my turn. Well, it's another The River King review, this time from Jane Stevenson of the Toronto Sun. Below are the bits where Ms Ehle is mentioned.

When Burns' police officer meets the school's photography teacher (British transplant Jennifer Ehle), sparks fly despite her impending marriage to another teacher (British actor Julian Rhind-Tutt).
...
But there are so many red herrings and so many cast members given so little to do -- notably Ehle who was so good as Elizabeth Bennett in the 1996 BBC mini-series, Pride And Prejudice and Canadian veteran actor Sean McCann wasted in a small role as Burns' father -- that no plot line or character is developed enough so that you actually care about what happens.

Pre-order The River King

Amazon.ca is allowing pre-orders for The River King, to be released on DVD on January 24th, 2006. It's $20.70 CDN and in Region 1 encoding. Thanks to Sands (and Richard) for the heads-up.

Americans can pre-order it from Movies Unlimited which is selling it for $22.49 USD. Barnes and Noble has it for $19.98 (non-members) or $17.98 (members).

According to distributor First Look Pictures, the DVD features scene selections, previews, plus Spanish and English subtitles. Here's the cover from that site.

"Horrível"

A scathing review of The River King. From the hopeless Babelfish translation, I gather that he's criticising the characterisation and chemistry.

Mistério em River King (River King, 2005, dir. não importa) - w/o. O cara da locadora não me deixou levar 9 Canções por causa da idade (bah!), então escolhi esse para levar. É horrível, vi uma hora e não deu pra terminar. Os personagens parecem inexistir, existem apenasem função de roteiro, tomam ações impensadas, e Edward Burns e aquela mulher formam o casal mais sem química que eu já vi na minha vida.

There's also a synopsis from CyberAmelia, featuring the photo below. Of slight interest perhaps is the fact that Paradise Road and Backbeat are translated as Um Canto de Esperança and Os Cinco Rapazes de Liverpool - literally "A Song of Hope" and "Five Guys from Liverpool".