Metrograph

Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons play two modern-day actors who, while filming an adaptation of John Fowles’s Victorian era-set novel of forbidden romance, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, begin an affair of their own that curiously echoes the events of the novel, each performer disappearing increasingly into their roles. Adapting Fowles, screenwriter Harold Pinter ingeniously devised the film’s parallel narratives as a cinematic equivalent to the novelist’s postmodern take on the Victorian novel, while Francis and production designer Assheton Gorton work in tandem to create a ravishing, idealized vision of the period, pre-Raphaelite painting being one vital visual reference.