Books Into Films – Ripple Effects

2025 is a Year of Anniversaries

250^th Birth Anniversary of Jane Austen (December 16)

It’s a great loss that Jane died so young, at 41, from a painful illness. The legacy of her six completed novels continue to thrive today. Movie adaptations are still being made, most notable is the upcoming new version of Pride and Prejudice with Emma Corrin as Lizzy, Jack Lowden as Mr. Darcy, and Olivia Colman as Mrs. Bennet. But we will never forget that iconic wet shirt scene of Colin Firth diving into the pond way back in 1995, thirty years ago.

30^th Anniversary* of Jane Austen Screen Adaptations:

Pride and Prejudice Austenmania was ignited with this six-part BBC TV series. Andrew Davis’ screenplay brings Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle together as the pivotal pair. To many, myself included, the definitive version of all the adaptations; yes, my prejudice here.

Sense and Sensibility That same year, 1995, we saw the breakout work of Taiwanese American director Ang Lee, proving his versatility, with Emma Thompson basking in the limelight receiving her Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

Persuasion While not as popular as Pride and Prejudice, a novel that shows a more mature writer showing her own sense of wisdom in handling love and life. Ciaran Hinds is an impressive Captain Wentworth.

Clueless One of the first modern renditions of Austen novels. Here’s an American teenager playing Emma in her high school. What follows are numerous contemporary parallels of Austen’s works, like Bridget Jones’s Diary, and across cultures, Bride and Prejudice, From Prada to Nada.

*Jane Austen’s House in Chawton is celebrating the 30^th Anniversary of these adaptations with their own special AUSTENMANIA! events.

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100^th Anniversary of the publication of some modern classics, books and poems* Listing a few here:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

One of my all-time favourite books. Filmmaker Baz Luhrmann highlights all the zeitgeist of the jazz age, the wild parties, and the gaudy excess but fails to bring out the deep character of the man behind those façade, a romantic hanging on hope and seeing every obstacle as a green light. My Ripple Review here.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

This is one example that the movie adaptation is as good as or even surpasses the book, for it shows more than words can tell. While I admire Woolf’s stream of consciousness, both in expression and withholding, director Steven Daldry’s multi-faceted depiction of Clarissa’s internal world projected into the psyche of two other women is exceptional. David Hare’s screenplay adapting Michael Cunningham’s The Hours is an exemplary transposition of literature onto the screen. And watching Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in one film is sure worth one’s ticket, or time.

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham is one of those writers who take you to places but still remain intact with his characters, the backdrop of foreign lands are merely that, backdrop, while the characters lead the story. I’ve seen the movie adaptation, and in my Ripple review I had written this: “Transforming great lines from a book into equally inspiring visual story-telling is an arduous task, and it’s something that mere beautiful cinematography cannot suffice.”

Carry On, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

The third of Wodehouse’s 20 Jeeves and Wooster books. Jeeves is a marvellous invention, a character that reminds me of Mr. Carson of Downton Abbey. There are lots of LOL moments. He’s like a Swiss army knife, a tool of multiple usages. Wodehouse makes him more than utilitarian though. In the interactions between employer and butler, the joke always falls on the former. And that’s the fun of it.

No More Parades by Ford Madox Ford

No More Parades is the second book in the Parade’s End tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) Set in the time of WWI, where poetry was written in the trenches. In its core a love story movingly depicted in the BBC five-episode TV series (2012), one of the most understated and neglected productions. A young Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall are the mismatched couple, but it’s the pristine Adelaide Clemens that shines as idealistic suffragette Valentine.

The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot

‘The Hollow Men’ is the title poem of this collection of poetry by Eliot, astute critic of his times. “We are the hollow men/we are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Headpiece filled with straw.” Alas, a look at our world today one would find how after one hundred years, Eliot’s critique of his society still stands.

*The popular ‘Year Reading Club’ on Kaggsy’s and Simon’s book blogs are featuring the 1925 Club reading event this October, where we read books published in 1925 and share our thoughts in our blogs.

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50^th Anniversary of some iconic movies:

Where were you in 1975? Watched any of these movies in the theatre?

Jaws dir. by Stephen Spielberg

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest dir. by Miles Forman

The Man Who Would be King dir. by John Houston

Monty Python and the Holy Grail dir. by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones

Dog Day Afternoon dir. by Sidney Lumet

Barry Lyndon dir. by Stanley Kubrick

The Return of the Pink Panther dir. by Blake Edwards

Three Days of the Condor by Sydney Pollack

Farewell, My Lovely dir. by Dick Richards

Funny Lady dir. by Herbert Ross

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Not born yet? How about 1985?

40th Anniversary of:

The Breakfast Club dir. by John Hughes

Back to the Future dir. by Robert Zemeckis

The Color Purple dir. by Stephen Spielberg

A Room with a View dir. by James Ivory

Out of Africa dir. by Sydney Pollack

The Purple Rose of Cairo dir. by Woody Allen

Vagabond dir. by Agnès Varda

Witness dir. by Peter Weir

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Numerous posts on Jane Austen, as well as movies and books mentioned in the above lists are posted here at Ripple Effects. Seek them out using the Search feature on the top of the left sidebar.

Small Things Like These: from Novella to Screen

Here’s an interesting fact. Claire Keegan’s books Foster (2010) and Small Things Like These (2020), both have 128 pages. While short as a standalone book, both novellas exemplify Keegan’s style of writing: sparse descriptions that carry powerful punches. I’m glad to note that their film adaptations are worthy productions akin to her style, quiet, nuanced, and poignant. Foster is made into the film The Quiet Girl in 2022. (My review here) Small Things Like These is newly released, directed by Tim Mielants and starring Cillian Murphy, following his Oscar role as Oppenheimer.

Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer) is a coal merchant in an Irish town. It’s Christmas time, cold and snowy, after the dirty lifting of heavy bags of coal, the devoted husband and father comes back to a warm household, wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) has supper ready and his five girls make up the chirpy harmony of home. The uneventful routine is disrupted one day when Bill makes his delivery to the local convent, witnessing a rough handling of a teenage girl being shoved into the entrance of the Catholic institution. Another time, when he stepped into the building to deliver his invoice, a girl scrubbing the floor comes up to him begging him to take her away. The next time he makes his delivery, he finds the girl locked inside the coal storage, dirty and shivering in cold.

The Magdalene Laundries are institutions operated by the Roman Catholic orders to house ‘fallen women’, asylums notorious for their abuse of the young women there, unpaid workhouses doing laundries for profit, unwed mothers having their babies forcibly taken away to be adopted. There have been features and TV series on this subject but the most exposure for viewers outside the UK is probably the movie Philomena (2013) starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. The note at the end of Small Things Like These explains the historic context, dedicating it to the more than 56,000 young women who were sent to the institutions between 1922 and 1998 for purpose of “penance and rehabilitation.”

Following his Best Actor Oscar win as physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer whose work, albeit not fully within his control, had affected the result of World War II, here in Small Things, Murphy is equally effective in his portrayal of a coal deliverer, fighting an internal war of conflict, a moral dilemma, to act upon his conscience thereby counteracting an institution that is all powerful in his town, or just to keep silent and do nothing to safeguard the wellbeing of his family. His wife says to him clearly like a warning, considering his soft heart: “If you want to get on in life, there are things you have to ignore.”

Bill’s past is interposed with his present throughout the film, for he was orphaned as a child but was raised by a loving woman. The compassionate upbringing he received could well had formed his sensitivity towards others’ suffering. Murphy’s performance of a troubling soul is heart wrenching, nuances captured aptly by closeups. Another frequent closeup shot is his handwashing after coming home from work, cleaning with soap and brushing out the black coal soots in his hands almost obsessively, a visual telling of his reluctance to join in the darkness of the world.

It’s small things like these, courageous acts by a common man despite social pressures and the negative consequences for his own family that make Bill a heroic figure. All five of his daughters need to get a good education in the Catholic-run system in town. To be at odds with Sister Mary (Emily Watson) is to have the door shut on his girls in terms of education and a good future. All these details are readily available as one reads Keegan’s book, but for those who have no contextual background before watching the film, such consequences of Bill’s moral dilemma may not be so easily grasped by the viewer. The film does drop hints in a few dialogues and subtly in certain scenes. For a 98-minute feature, more elaboration to denote these issues could be helpful in terms of the congruence of the storytelling and especially in magnifying the price Bill has to pay for his courageous act of compassion.

Overall, a worthy adaptation of Keegan’s novella. Come awards time later this year, I hope to see Murphy being acknowledged for his performance here. It’s small films like this that make cinema arts gratifying aesthetically and meaningful socially in our world that needs constant critique and reflection.

~ ~ ~ 1/2 Ripples

Related Posts on Ripple Effects:

The Quiet Girl Movie Review: From the Literary to the Visual

Passing by Nella Larsen: from Novella to Screen

Novellas to Screen

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Novellas in November is hosted by 746 Books and Bookish Beck

Book to Screen in Development 2024 and Beyond

Last post I listed some adaptations from books to the big and small screens coming out this fall in the festival circuit or via streaming platforms. Here are more titles currently in development or in production.

James (2024) by Percival Everett

Stephen Spielberg executive producer, in pre-production, to be directed by Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, 2019) James is Percival Everett’s re-imagination of The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of escaped slave Jim. Currently, the highly acclaimed novel is long-listed for this year’s Booker Prize. Short list will come out Sept. 16 and James is expected to be on there. This is the second movie adaptation of Everett’s novels. After the success last year of his Erasure being turned into the Oscar winning American Fiction–for Best Adapted Screenplay–James is a highly anticipated encore.

Hamnet (2020) by Maggie O’Farrell

Another one on Stephen Spielberg’s list as producer, now in production. The adaptation of O’Farrell’s novel is directed by Nomadland’s Oscar winning Chloé Zhao, with a talented British cast: Jessie Buckley, Emily Watson, Paul Mescal, and Joe Alwyn. The book is a fictional account of Shakespeare and his wife’s loving relationship with their son Hamnet and their coping with his tragic death at the age of eleven. Zhao’s previous films (before Marvel’s The Eternals) are nuanced and soulful cinematic works. I look forward to her helming this adaptation about love and grief.

Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder (2024) by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie’s personal account of the traumatic, life altering event of being stabbed multiple times while on stage in upstate New York, August 2022, and his slow and painful recuperation. Ironically, he was speaking on the topic of keeping writers safe. His memoir will be adapted to the screen by the Oscar winning documentarian Alex Gibney. I’ve given this book 4 stars on Goodreads, was totally riveted by Rushdie’s writing. Hope Gibney’s is an effective documentation and a cautionary testimonial to safeguard artists from harm.

The Chronicles of Narnia (1950’s) by C. S. Lewis

After crashing the glass ceiling, catapulting Barbie to a record $1.4 billion box office sale by a sole woman director, Greta Gerwig is tasked to write and helm at least two of C. S. Lewis’s beloved children series as Netflix films. In a BBC interview, Gerwig said: “I’m slightly in the place of terror because I really do have such reverence for Narnia… I’m intimidated by doing this. It’s something that feels like a worthy thing to be intimidated by.” Let’s hope her fear is a driving force to push her towards excellence in adapting this meaningful book series.

Crying in H Mart (2021) by Michelle Zauner

Poignant memoir of Zauner’s, singer songwriter of the band Japanese Breakfast, about her rediscovery of her Korean heritage and reestablishing a deeper mother-daughter relationship through food and cooking… alas, after her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis. As an Asian American, her father is Caucasian of Jewish heritage, Zauner’s book is a new and significant voice. She is writing the script herself, Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) directing. Zauner will create the soundtrack with her group Japanese Breakfast. The memoir is an American Book Award winner (2022) and the 2021 Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir & Autobiography, 55 weeks in the NYT Bestseller list.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (2022) by Gabrielle Zevin

Here’s another contemporary, literary voice from a biracial American writer. Like H Mart author Zauner, Zevin’s father is of Jewish and mother Korean heritage. Its title alluding to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a unique and original story about self, love, and video games. Goodreads Choice Awards in Fiction (2022) and top book of the year on numerous lists, and one of my best reads last year. Excited to find out that Paramount Pictures had acquired the film rights even before the book was published, and recently learned that Siân Heder, the Oscar winning director of CODA (2021), has signed on to direct.

The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware’s popular suspense thriller takes place on a cruise ship, with British star Keira Knightley on board as a journalist who is the only eyewitness to a murder. The Netflix movie will be directed by Simon Stone (The Dig, 2021). Other Ruth Ware books on the drawing board for adaptation are The Turn of the Key and The It Girl. No further info on these.

Run Rose Run (2022) by Dolly Parton and James Patterson

Dolly Parton and country music fans take note, the legendary singer’s dip into the literary ink pot with her first fiction, a thriller she co-wrote with James Patterson, is to be adapted onto screen. The NYT bestseller about a young singer songwriter on the rise and on the run will be produced by Reese Witherspoon.

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Do you have any books you’d like to see adapted to a movie or TV series?

The 1937 Club: Maugham’s ‘Theatre’ from Book to Screen

To wrap up my week for The 1937 Club, I’m re-posting my review of W. Somerset Maugham’s Theatre published in 1937 which some of you have read. As I’m still reading Virginia Woolf’s The Years, haven’t time to reread Maugham’s book this time. I want to re-post my review mainly because I’d like to share my thoughts back in 2010 when I wrote it, and see how much our society has changed in terms of what is real, the main issue by which in Maugham’s book, the son Roger is so disturbed regarding his theatre actress mother Julia Lambert.

As for book turned into films, those familiar with Ripple Effects know that I see the literary and the visual as different art forms, therefore being ‘faithful’ isn’t the major qualifier for a good adaptation. However, in this case, I’m quite disappointed that the essence or, the main issue, as represented by Roger’s frustration with his mother has not been transposed onto the screen, downplaying the tension and conflict that’s so crucial in the book.

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Two pages into the book I knew right away I had seen it before. Of course, that’s the movie Being Julia (2004). Annette Bening got a Best Actress Oscar nom for her portrayal of Julia Lambert, a famous actress on the London stage in the 1930’s. The movie is a colourful account of how a successful stage actress deals with her mid-life crisis. Garnering fame, fortune, and achievement in bounty, what more could she ask for but… love and passion. And during the course, obstacles, jealousy, and betrayal are all overcome, and revenge carried out; on or off stage, no matter, it’s equally exciting for the glamorous Julia Lambert.

But not until I read this novel on which the movie was based did I realize that a most important passage had been left out. And oh what an omission! For the crux of the book rests on those few pages. And not only that, the screenwriter had chosen to alter a character to suit his fancy, rounding off the edges of conflicts and alleviating tensions in presenting a smooth and suave storyline.

In the movie, Julia’s son Roger is a young man fresh out of Eton and planning to attend Cambridge after the summer. That much is true to the book. Roger is shown to be a devoted son, lovingly supportive of his mother in her pursuits in career and love life. But this is not the case in the novel. Maugham has crafted Roger as a critical young man, offering the necessary tension to the story. In a crucial scene at the end of the book, he questions Julia’s behaviour and integrity. These challenges form the climatic confrontation between mother and son, projecting the meaning behind the very title of the novel.

Here is an excerpt from this scene that captures the essence of the whole book. Julia asks Roger:

“What is it you want?”
Once again he gave her his disconcerting stare. It was hard to know if he was serious, for his eyes faintly shimmered with amusement.
“Reality.”
“What do you mean?”
“You see, I’ve lived all my life in an atmosphere of make-believe…. You never stop acting. It’s second nature to you. You act when there’s a party here. You act to the servants, you act to Father, you act to me. To me you act the part of the fond, indulgent, celebrated mother. You don’t exist, you’re only the innumerable parts you’ve played. I’ve often wondered if there was ever a you or if you were never anything more than a vehicle for all these other people that you’ve pretended to be. When I’ve seen you go into an empty room I’ve sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I’ve been afraid to in case I found nobody there.”

By turning Roger into a complacent and docile young man, the screenwriter had failed to present the necessary tension in the story. Further, by avoiding the character foil between the successful actress mother and her meaning-pursuing, idealistic son, the movie fails to deliver the essential subtext, despite an impressive performance by Annette Bening.

Further, the best is yet to come in the book… such is the ingenuity of Maugham. After a superb, revengeful performance, overarching her rival, the young and beautiful Avice Crichton, and drawing everyone’s admiration back to herself, Julia celebrates on her own with a nice meal and mulls over a gratifying notion, on the very last page:

“Roger says we don’t exist. Why, it’s only we who do exist. They are the shadows and we give them substance. We are the symbols of all this confused, aimless struggling that they call life, and it’s only the symbol which is real. They say acting is only make-believe. That make-believe is the only reality.”

This is ever so relevant for us today. With all the online personae we can create and project, all behind the guard of anonymity, Roger’s quest for what’s real remains a valid search.

Sherry Turkle, the acclaimed ‘anthropologist of cyberspace’, has observed the liminal reality in our postmodern world and stated her own quest:

“I’m interested in how the virtual impinges on what we’ve always called the real, and how the real impinges on the virtual.”

Let’s just hope that the advancement of technology would not get the better of us, blurring the lines of fact and fiction, offering shields for fraud and deceits. Behind the liminal existence, let’s hope too that we still care what’s real and what’s not, and that our humanity will still be valued and not be compromised or lost in the vast abyss of bits and bytes.

The upcoming Academy Awards too, is another platform to showcase such a duality. I always find the acceptance speeches of award winners intriguing: what’s genuine and what’s fake in their thank you’s. Are they presenting their real self or merely acting? Outside of their roles, which part of them is authentic? Or, do they ever get out of their roles?

It’s interesting too to explore the influence of movies nowadays. Again, the postmodern emphasis is on the narrative, multiples of them, and storytelling the vehicle of meaning. Does the notion of Maugham’s character Julia mirror our world… that movies have become the symbols of what we call life? That make-believe has sometimes been merged with reality? Can we still tell them apart? Or, should we even try? Considering the pervasive effects of pop culture in our life today, considering a single movie can command a worldwide box office sale of $2.4 billion, and counting… Maugham was prophetic indeed.

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Again, I thank Simon and Karen for hosting. Looking forward to the next year club in the coming months.

The Zone of Interest and the Banality of Evil

How does a German family spend their summer holidays? Imagine this one with mom and dad and their five children in a country house. Family picnic by the river, dad fishing, mom admiring her large and impressive garden, children splashing in the pool. Dad got a surprise birthday present, a canoe, which he takes to the quiet stream with two of his older children surrounded by bird songs. Dad not only loves his family, but his horse, his dog, and those lilac bushes.

A picture of an idyllic and peaceful family life. Zoom out a bit, the country house is right adjacent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, separated by just a wall, barbed wire on top. We can only see the top of the prison buildings. Yes, we also see heavy smoke shooting out from tall chimneys.

This is an actual, historic setting. The master of the household is Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He rides to work on his beloved horse, doesn’t have far to go, only next door. An idyllic family life and the horrors of genocide co-exist side by side, the Garden of Eden and Hell separated by just one wall. As for the wall, Rudolf’s wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) is thinking of growing some vine to cover it, making it disappear altogether.

Writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest is a macabre juxtaposition of normality and atrocity, a cinematic representation of what the political thinker and philosopher Hannah Arendt calls the banality of evil. It doesn’t take a monster to commit monstrous acts. Ordinary people had committed them without questioning, as Judith Butler wrote about Arendt’s book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the organizers of the Holocaust:

In a sense, by calling a crime against humanity ‘banal’, [Arendt] was trying to point to the way in which the crime had become for the criminals accepted, routinised, and implemented without moral revulsion and political indignation and resistance.
The Guardian, Aug. 29, 2011

Glazer’s ingenuity in depicting the ‘horror next door’ is by not showing us visually but audibly. While we see the Höss family going about their daily life, we can hear constant gunshots, dogs barking, guards yelling, furnace rumbling, and anguished cries. Indeed, the whole Höss family have learned to ignore such ‘disturbances.’ Their callousness is chilling. When Rudolf received the order to transfer from Auschwitz to Oranienburg, Hedwig tells him that she wants to stay right there with the children while Rudolf can attend his new post alone. Their rationale: “The life we enjoy is very much worth the sacrifice.” Hedwig adds in, “this is the way Hitler would want us to live.” Here is their dream home.

If such a normal family can be complicit to evil without questioning, Arendt’s implication is that we who consider ourselves ordinary folks can also be susceptible to commit criminal wrongdoings out of the desire for group conformity or self-interest. It doesn’t take a villainous monster to commit atrocious acts, we all have the propensity for evil. That wall separating the garden and hell could be the metaphoric, thin line between good and evil within ourselves. Another chilling thought, this time much closer in our own backyard.

Two-time Oscar nominated cinematographer Lukasz Zal (Cold War, 2019; Ida, 2015) placed cameras in and outside of the house unobtrusively to capture the actors in their natural way. Shot in natural lighting, with no camera people on set, the film is a raw depiction of the behavior of a family in their mundane mode of living, a heartless picture of irony to what’s taking place on the other side of the wall.

Two scenes particularly stand out for me. Hedwig tries on a long fur coat––loot from the prisoners next door––looking into a full-length mirror, clutching the collars and posing from side to side as if trying it in a boutique shop. Another scene is one of the older boys using his flashlight to examine something while in bed at night. An insert shot shows what he’s studying: teeth with gold trims; not hard to figure out where they come from.

Any relief from such insensitivity? Glazer has inserted some fairytale-like sequences in reverse black and white of a girl hiding food in the bushes, for the prisoners we presume, that’s when we hear the voice-over of Rudolf reading to his children the story of Hansel and Gretel in their bed. Fairytale or dream sequence, or for real, is that one of the Höss girls? No matter, that’s the humanity we seek.

Loosely based on Martin Amis’ novel, Zone of Interest is an ‘arthouse’ style of filmmaking that offers a unique perspective of the Holocaust without showing any of the prisoners, except the one that works in the Höss garden. Sounds elicit unseen implications. The film starts and ends with a long, eerie cacophony of anguish and squeals with the screen a blurry mass of grey. The effects evoked are none less haunting than actual shots of the concentration camp. The ending scene comes back to today and the way the camera captures the people there is most effective in wrapping up this retelling of history.

With its one hour and forty-five minutes duration, the film is succinct, well-paced and edited, naturalistic in its styling, and leaves viewers with haunting ponderings after. Winner of four Cannes Prizes, The Zone of Interested is nominated in five categories in this coming Academy Awards on March 10: Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Sound. Hope it could get some worthy recognition on this side of the Atlantic.

~ ~ ~ ~ Ripples

Related Ripple Reviews:

Anatomy of a Fall

Ida’s Choice: Thoughts on Pawlikowski’s Ida

Upcoming Books to Screen Reading List

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Towles’ 2016 novel is currently filming and will likely come out at the end of 2023 or early 2024. Ewan McGregor plays Count Alexander Rostov who, in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, is kept under house arrest in at the Metropol Hotel across the street from the Kremlin, a sentence laid down by a Bolshevik tribunal. The book is developed into an 8-episode TV series on Amazon. Quite an original story idea and the dramatization will likely liven up the seemingly mundane life of the aristocrat banished to the servants quarter of a luxury hotel.

Caste: The Origin of our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson

Oscar-nominated Ava DuVernay is producing, directing and writing the screen adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson’s critically acclaimed non-fiction work, using a multiple story structure to investigate the ‘unspoken system that has shaped America and chronicles how lives today are defined by a hierarchy of human divisions dating back generations.’ DuVernay has been a powerful filmmaker and spokesperson probing systemic inequality, the nation’s discriminatory past and present. Her works include Selma (2014), 13^th (2016), and When They See Us (2019). Caste will be a Netflix movie.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

The memoir of the lead musician of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast is Goodreads Choice Awards for Memoir in 2022. Zauner movingly describes how she comes to terms with her identity as a Korean-American when she goes back to her root in Oregon to care for her mother suffering from terminal cancer. Music and food strengthen their bond. The actor in The White Lotus and director of The Electrical Life of Louis Wain Will Sharpe will direct. A casting call went out on Twitter to play Zauner on screen. Just a thought… Zauner could be a prime candidate to play herself.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

Where there’s oil, there will be blood. One of the most-touted movies of 2023 is this adaptation of the non-fiction book by Grann, winner of the 2018 Edgar Award. Grann chronicles the discovery of oil in the Osage County in Oklahoma where several of the natives there were murdered. The Osage Murders is the newly created FBI’s first big case, with its young director J. Edgar Hoover rising to the challenge. Premiered at Cannes in May and under the helm of Martin Scorsese, with a superb cast with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Brandon Fraser, Jesse Plemon, John Lithgow, and Tantoo Cardinal, herself a highly decorated Canadian aboriginal actress, the movie will be nothing short of epic.

Mrs. March by Virginia Feito

Reads like a Patricia Highsmith psychological novel with a touch of mystery… in particular, Edith’s Diary. Suspense novels nowadays often feature an unreliable narrator stringing out a sequence of events and perceptions that blur the line between reality and the delusionary. Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss’s new production company is developing the movie and Moss will play the title character. I’ve listened to the audiobook and look forward to seeing how Moss portrays the internal multiverse of Mrs. March. The old classic The Three Faces of Eve (1957) comes to mind. Feito is writing the screenplay.

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

Ruskovich is an O. Henry Prize winner and this her debut novel has garnered praises on its originality, masterful language and imagery. A family spending a hot August day in an Idaho mountain collecting birch wood faces a fateful turn in their lives. A psychological thriller exploring dementia and its ripple effects. The New Yorker review has this powerful statement: ‘The book is also an affecting portrait of how love can endure when memory fails.’ This one is high on my TBR list. Another title Elizabeth Moss’s new production company is developing.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

2022 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction. Here’s another example of some outstanding Asian American writers and artists not known for their mixed racial roots and identity but have approached the subject in their novels nonetheless. Zevin, whose mother is Korean and father Jewish, touches on such an issue from an original and fresh perspective: two young people meet in the real world of video game creation. I’ve listened to the audiobook and found it to be one of the most unique and interesting reads I’ve come across in recent years. Zevin’s other book The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is now streaming on various platforms.

The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis

British writer Martin Amis’s 2015 Walter Scott Prize winning novel is turned into a film directed by Jonathan Glazer. Premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and garnering the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize. The story is a macabre juxtaposition of horror and a love affair. The commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Höss, and his wife strive to build an idyllic family home situated right next to the death camp. To add to the horrific irony and complexity, a Nazi official has an affair with the commandant’s wife. Critics have cited Amis’s book as a very different Holocaust novel, and the movie has now become a notable in the 2023 international awards circuit.

Emily Henry’s Books to Screen

For beach read fans, summer reading has to include Emily Henry’s novels. If you’re a fan of hers and like to see her works on screen, here’s the good news: all three of Henry’s popular books are in development into rom-coms:

People We Meet on Vacation
The 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards for Romance Novel is to be directed by Brett Haley. Screenwriter Yulin Kuang’s adapted script has already received endorsement and high praise from Henry herself.

Book Lovers
Two years in a row, Henry won the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards for Romance with Book Lovers, perhaps a contemporary queen of the genre? Sarah Heyward is set to write the script, movie will be produced by Tango (Aftersun, 2022)

Beach Read
Just announced is that the Emmy nominated writer director Yulin Kuang, screenwriter for People We Meet on Vacation, is taking the helm to write and direct Beach Read, Henry’s third popular fiction to be transported onto screen. Contemporary rom-com, breezy, light, and… will it re-create the wave that Nora Ephron was once so well-known for?

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‘The Quiet Girl’ Movie Review: From the literary to the visual

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) is the first Irish-language film to be nominated for an Oscar, representing Ireland in the Best International Feature category in this year’s 95^th Academy Awards held on March 12^th.

In this his debut feature, Irish director Colm Bairéad adapts Claire Keegan’s short story “Foster” in a style that’s akin to the literary source. Together with director of photography Kate McCullough (Normal People, 2020), Bairéad has created on screen a sparse and sensitive rendering of Keegan’s story, camera shots that are calm storytelling and restraints that convey emotional depth. The choice of the 4:3 Academy aspect ratio gives the feeling of a time past, like an old home video preserving a young girl’s memorable experience.

Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is sent away to spend the summer with her mother’s relatives, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and Seán Cinnsealach (Andrew Bennett). Having lived in an impoverished household full of siblings and one more expecting, with a father who takes ‘liquid supper’ before coming home and an overburdened mother, Cáit experiences for the first time in her short stay at the Cinnsealach’s quiet and childless farm home what it means to be cared for, and towards the end, learns that keeping silent can be an act of love.

Just like Keegan’s style of using the minimal to convey much, The Quiet Girl is sparse and sensitive in its visual storytelling. Eibhlín is shown to be kind right from the beginning, Seán less so, hardly acknowledges Cáit. His reticence is nuanced though, a slight turn of his head even when he’s facing the TV and with his back to the child betrays a moment of thought, of self-reflection. Seán’s coming around is endearing, like the moment he leaves a single cookie on the table as he walks by Cáit in the kitchen. Actions speak louder than words.

In the bedroom she’s in, Cáit observes the wallpaper with train images and the boy’s clothing she now wears, as her own suitcase is still in her Da’s car trunk as he has forgotten to leave it with her in his rush to leave. She observes her new environment and the people she’s with, and gets some shocking information when a nosy neighbor spills out the Cinnsealachs’ tragic past to her.

As one who has just read Keegan’s short story and been deeply moved by her writing, I come to this review not to compare how ‘faithful’ the film adaptation is, which it is, but that how some of the ‘cinematic moments’ in the book are transposed on screen.

Writer director Bairéad has added some scenes of Cáit in school and at home at the beginning of the film, enhancing the characterization of the girl, quiet and alone, even at home. While the ponderous visual storytelling deserves praise, I do find in certain moments, Bairéad could have added just a bit more dramatic effects, not for gratuitous purpose, but to elicit a more powerful punch towards the cathartic end.

[The following contains spoiler]

Two examples I have in mind. First is when Seán decides they should stop letting the girl wear the boy’s clothes and that he’ll drive them to town to buy Cáit new clothes for herself. That’s a defining moment bringing up a painful, unspoken past, and stopping their substituting Cáit for the one they had lost. Eibhlín is picking gooseberry at the kitchen table with Cáit. Here’s the excerpt from Keegan’s story about the very moment her husband tells them to go change and get ready to go into town to buy clothes for Cáit:

The woman keeps on picking the gooseberries from the colander, stretching her hand out, but a little more slowly each time, for the next. At one point I think she will stop but she keeps on until she is finished and then she gets up and places the colander on the sink and lets out a sound I’ve never heard anyone make, and slowly goes upstairs.

That sound that the girl has ‘never heard anyone make’ is bone chilling even when I was just reading the words, and would have been a most effective cinematic moment to convey pain and grief. Unfortunately what could have been a stirring moment for viewers did not materialize in that scene.

The second is more crucial, a scene that I take as the climax of the story, the girl’s accident at the well. More intensity in visual storytelling, or even just sound instead of the subtle handling of the incident––not for the sake of mere dramatic effects but to show the gravity of the mishap and its implications–– is needed to elicit more potently the poignant act of silence later when Cáit is determined not to mention the accident to her mother who has sensed something must have happened when the girl comes home sneezing.

The cathartic ending of the film is to be applauded for it has brought out Keegan’s powerful writing most vividly. What’s more heartrending than just reading is that we can see the face of the girl running and hear the final word she utters to Seán as she flies into his embrace. That is the power of film.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

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This is my third post participating in the Reading Ireland Month hosted by Cathy 746 Books.

Previous posts:

“Foster” by Claire Keegan: Short story review

The Banshees of Inisherin: Movie review

Paris in July: Isabelle Huppert & Pascal Greggory superb in ‘Gabrielle’

Paris in July is a good opportunity to explore French films. I’ve watched a few in the past weeks. Here’s one that I’d like to write about, Gabrielle (2005). I found it on Kanopy, free streaming if you have a library card.

Language here makes an interesting transference. The film Gabrielle is an adaptation of a Joseph Conrad novella entitled The Return. Polish-born Conrad wrote it in English (available online here.) The end credits of the film note that the script is based on the French version Le Retour, translated by Georges Jean-Aubry. Screenplay co=written by director Patrice Chéreau and Anne-Louise Trividic. The title is changed to Gabrielle. Lastly, the literary is transposed into the visual form.

Isabelle Huppert (Things to Come, 2016)) and Pascal Greggory (La Vie en Rose, 2007) bring to the screen expert performance of a marriage in dissolution. Knotted ten years in a loveless marital relationship, the high society couple Gabrielle (Huppert) and Jean (Greggory) Hervey, a self-assured businessman and newspaper financier, keep up appearances by throwing lavish dinner parties in 1912 Paris.

They entertain no less than fifty of their friends and acquaintances every week in their mansion served by numerous maids. Interestingly, no butler or footmen. The film won Best Production Design and Best Costume Design César Awards in 2006. A visually gorgeous setting, especially at the dinner table with guests.

In ironic contrast to the aesthetic beauty and richness of interior design, Jean and Gabrielle are impoverished in their passion for each other. Ten years ago, Jean claimed a trophy wife. In his voiceover narrative, Gabrielle is “well bred and intelligent… no ordinary woman. I love her as a collector does his most prized item.”

Camera work is captivating. Director Patrice Chéreau uses mirrors around the house to capture his characters in psychological reflections. Stylistically, he adopts two visual modes on screen, interchanging colour with black and white to juxtapose present reality with memory or imaginary scenario. Interesting is that in a film with the title of the female character, the wife, the voiceover narrator and point of view is the husband’s, conveying subliminally who holds the control of the relationship. Throughout, a film exudes with realism and at times, a touch of Hitchcockian suspense. Occasionally, large written words are flashed on screen like silent movies, a whimsical stroke that well serves as comic relief.

The tipping point crashes down when Jean comes home one day to find a note left by Gabrielle saying she has left him with another man. The short note is like a bombshell to Jean, for he hasn’t noticed any issue with their marriage. His immediate concern is how this will look in front of his servants and in society? And there’s a Thursday dinner party coming up.

His devastation is short however, for in just a few hours, Gabrielle returns. On the surface, her return seems to bring back the status quo, but it only rings in the death knell of a dissipating marriage. Huppert and Greggory bring out their characters’ boiling psychological turmoil and relational conflicts to the surface expertly; the intense emotional transactions in their dialogues are rare in today’s movies. These lines follow Jean’s questioning of his wife:

Gabrielle: When I decided to go to him, I wrote the note.

Jean: So you saw a lot of him? Then this letter is not the worst of it?

Gabrielle: The worst is my coming back.

Jean, the smug and successful businessman assures himself that ‘the law is on my side.’ It’s only Gabrielle who suffers the more damage if she chooses to leave. But of course, Gabrielle cares more for finding true love than fame or fortune. Anna Karenina comes to mind. As well, the power imbalance in their relationship reminds me of the tragic heroine Isabel Archer in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady.

The very literary rendition of the film makes quotable quotes out of many verbal exchanges and the voiceover narrative throughout the film. Why is appearance the main concern for Jean to start with? Because the society people coming to their home every week are “men and women who fear emotion and failure more than fire, war, or fatal disease.”

The twist at the final scene see a change come to Jean when Gabrielle, with a passive-aggressive undercurrent, offers her physical body unreservedly to Jean only to let him see intimacy doesn’t mean love, and without which, all is meaningless. He breaks away from her suddenly, staggers down the stairs and stumbles out of the house like a man gone mad. At the risk of leaving any spoilers, for this is after all a classic written in the late 19th century, I’m sure this can be excused: the last words flashed on the screen are the exact three words that end Conrad’s story.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

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Paris in July 2022 is co-hosted by Tamara at Thyme for Tea and Deb of Readerbuzz

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Other French films reviewed on Ripple Effects:

Faces Places dir. by Agnes Varda

Coco Before Chanel dir. by Anne Fontaine

Things to Come dir. by Mia Hansen-Løve

Cleo from 5 to 7 dir. by Agnes Varda

Diary of a Country Priest dir. by Robert Bresson

Clouds of Sils Maria dir. by Olivier Assayas

Book to Screen Bingeables

The word is in the OED, could well have gained relevance during the pandemic. Currently, two 2022 Netflix series can be described as such, bingeable. Both are adaptations from books in the genre of crime and courtroom drama. One major factor that makes them watchable is that both are created by David E. Kelly. A legal series associated with Kelly is likely to be of quality. His filmography too long to list.

THE LINCOLN LAWYER

Based on Michael Connelly’s The Brass Verdict (2008), the second book in his Mickey Haller series. The successful LA criminal defence attorney works mostly in his chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car, hence the namesake of the title. Unlike the book and Matthew McConaughey’s portrayal in the 2011 movie adaptation, Mickey here in the Netflix TV series (S1, 10 episodes) is more vulnerable, less self-assured, yet unrelenting in seeking the truth, and above all else, possessing genuine care for his daughter and ex-wives; in other words, a better man.

Other than the writing, a major asset is the cast. No big name A-listers, but the roles are aptly filled: Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Mickey, Neve Campbell as ex Maggie the prosecutor, Krista Warner as their teenage daughter Hayley; and at the office, yes there’s an office other than the back of the Lincoln, Becki Newton as Lorna, another ex, Angus Sampson as Cisco. Jazz Raycole as driver Izzy whom Mickey offers the job after defending her in court. Must mention is Christopher Gorham (Auggie Anderson back in Covert Affairs 2010-14) as the high profile client Trevor Elliot accused of the double murder of wife and her lover.

The 10 episodes flow well with several storylines going at the same time, adding interest and complexity. And as author Connelly has generously sprinkled in his books, the human side of his characters is the driving force behind the stories and conflicts. Mickey needs to come back from rehab, having developed drug dependency for pain relief after a surfing accident, on top of that, to gain back the trust and love from his ex-wife and in sharing the responsibility of parenthood… and wishful thinking it might seem, pursuing a second chance in a failed marriage.

Career wise, the high-profile case of defending video game developer Trevor Elliot could catapult him back on the track of success after his hiatus. What’s intriguing is that we see Mickey and Trevor often in a cat and mouse game. Newly handed down by a judge this case as the previous defence lawyer was gun down just days before the trial, and with not much to go on, Mickey has to rely on instinct, logical thinking, gut, as well as Lorna and Cisco’s unconventional investigative techniques.

The adaptation has an updated storyline that’s different from the 2008 book, but Connelly’s mark is there, as well as Kelly’s smart screenplay and direction. The meaning of the title? Disclosed at the end, the hidden key to this bingeable series.

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ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL

Across the Atlantic, we have a notable British court case dealing with a reputable Member of Parliament being charged with the rape of his staff researcher, a 6-episode adaptation of the 2018 novel by Sarah Vaughan.

Some well-known actors make up the cast of this Netflix mini-series. Rupert Friend plays MP James Whitehouse, Sienna Miller as wife Sophie, who stands by him until the truth is revealed. Prosecutor is Kate Woodcroft played by Michelle Dockery––Lady Mary Crawley of Downton––donning a wig, gown and glasses, convincing as a Queen’s Counsel. The victim is Olivia Lytton (Naomi Scott); defence barrister for James is Angela Regan (Josette Simon).

A rape case hanging on the issue of consent, both the prosecutor and defence offer persuasive arguments. Both sides contributed to some intense scenes in a sexual, criminal trial that involves, by its very nature, the need to be explicit and exact in its language and graphic in its description. Can the concept of ‘boys will be boys’, or, the misunderstanding of intent, ‘yes’ or ‘no’, be a viable defence for rape?

Similar storylines had appeared in movies such as The Riot Club (2014), very similar indeed, as the privileged boys from Oxford University, like the Libertines here, exercise freely their liberties and vulgarity. More recently, the Oscar winning Promising Young Woman (2020), written and directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Carey Mulligan, delivers a U.S. medical school version.

More than just courtroom drama. The backstory of these characters is intriguing and as the truth reveals itself, the moral complexity multiplies. Interestingly, the ‘brass verdict’ concept in The Lincoln Lawyer finds affiliation here. Cinematography is slick and editing is fast-paced. An apt transposition of Vaughan’s novel.

~ ~ ~ Ripples for both

‘The Power of the Dog’: Exquisite Cinematic Storytelling

From the very beginning as the opening credits appear, the premise of the story is laid out for the viewers. This is a crucial introduction as it sets the stage for what the story is about, how a son would do all he could to save his mother from suffering. The narrator is Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) via a voiceover:

“When my father passed, I wanted nothing more than my mother’s happiness. For what kind of a man would I be if I did not help my mother? If I did not save her?’

It is Montana in 1925. Peter’s mother Rose (Kirsten Dunst) runs The Red Mill restaurant and lodge in the remote landscape of the wild. One day a group of cowhands driving their cattle passes by. While dining at the restaurant, their leader, rancher Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), picks on the effeminate Peter as he serves them. Rose is distraught, but the kindness and love of Phil’s brother George (Jesse Plemons) wins her over. Not long after that the two are married. The downside of an otherwise beautiful relationship is having to live under the same roof with Phil in the Burbank family ranch home.

The Burbank family ranch in The Power of the Dog. Photo: Kirsty Griffin/Netflix

Rose lives in fear of Phil, a bully who can crush her fragile psyche by just whistling. Phil’s masterful banjo playing is a slap in the face and a show of force as Rose struggles to learn to play the piano. George while loving is oblivious or rather subdued by Phil as well. Peter has gone away to study medicine but is back in the summer to be with his mother, observing keenly her deteriorating psychological state and addiction to alcohol for relief. The relevance of the opening lines in the voiceover begins to brew.

New Zealand born director Jane Campion, one of only seven women ever to have been nominated for an Oscar in directing (The Piano, 1993), comes back with an exquisite production shot on location in New Zealand, twelve years after her last feature film. The Power of the Dog is an exemplar of superb cinematic storytelling.

Campion has an exceptional team under her helm. The four main characters are strong talents. Cumberbatch’s nasty streak is conveyed not only by his demeaning words but his posture and the confident way he walks and rides. However, nothing pierces as sharply as his often silent and chilly manner, staring his opponent down with his ominous gaze, a role that’s against type for the British actor who had brought Sherlock to a new generation and had since been nominated for an Oscar playing WWII math genius Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014). Cumberbatch’s performance here is in top form, likely getting him another Oscar nomination.

It is Smit-McPhee who steals the scene as the effeminate, slim and pale Peter. Underneath his appearance of weakness is his tenacity and a smart mind, especially when his self-imposed mission is to save his mother. Discovering accidentally Phil’s secret hideout, Peter comes to realize that hidden behind Phil’s macho front is a gay man. Knowing this, he gains Phil’s trust and admiration to turn the tables on him. The whole revealing of the plot flows out seamlessly; no doubt, credits also to the author of the 1967 novel the film is based on, Thomas Savage.

Campion’s storytelling is masterful in that she drops hint after hint as the film moves on, all important cues leading to the ultimate end. Without spilling any spoilers in this review, look out for these scenes: cows dead from anthrax, Peter’s anatomy exercise in his room, his exploring the mountains by himself and skinning the hide of a dead cow he comes across there, his gloved hands.

Cinematographer Ari Wegner frames her shots exquisitely and imbues them with contextual meaning to move the story along. The topography of the New Zealand location in place of Montana’s wild west exudes the beauty of the natural landscape, creating a colour palette of the open range with shades of brown, teal, and dusty rose for Dunst, at times capturing the natural light of the golden hour; Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven comes to mind. From her camera, the interior set design of the ranch home and the barn are framed with superb aesthetics.

The score composed by Jonny Greenwood (Phantom Thread, 2017) augments the suspenseful mood, particularly effective is the dissonance of the strings, revealing the discords among the characters and their internal strife.

A Western only in its setting, with no shootouts but no less intense, characterization astute, conflicts psychological. The finale leaves a slight, nuanced smile on the face of the victor. He can now ride off into the sunset with relief as the Bible verse the title comes from, Ps. 22:20, is fulfilled: ‘deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog.’ A new chapter begins for Rose and George as they step back into the ranch home as a free and happy couple.

~ ~ ~ ~ Ripples

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The Power of the Dog is now streaming on Netflix.

The Lost Daughter: From Book to Screen

Elena Ferrante’s book The Lost Daughter (2006) is a harsh look at motherhood, shattering the romantic view associated with the word like maternal love and sacrificial nurturing. The protagonist Leda is torn between the demanding duties of caring for two young daughters and her own academic career. Overwhelmed and feeling suffocated, she abandons her children Bianca and Martha, 7 and 5, for three years.

Years later, Leda has become a successful academic and divorced. Her two daughters are now grown up and living with their father in Toronto. While taking a working holiday at the Ionian seaside, a boisterous family disrupts her peace and solitude on the beach. Though annoyed by their rowdy interruption, she’s drawn to a young mother, Nina, who has to constantly attend to a clingy three-year-old daughter Elena. Memories gush out from her own experience as a young mother, and with that, guilt. However, her guilt may not be so much about her abandonment of her daughters but that she “felt amazing without them.”

For a short while on the beach, Elena is lost. Nina and all the family are frantic in search of her. Leda finds her and brings her back to the fold. Just as she does this good deed, she hides a doll that Elena is attached to dearly. The family is now frantic in finding the lost doll as Elena is inconsolable. She later admits to Nina that “I’m an unnatural mother.” Is that enough to excuse herself?

While Ferrante doesn’t offer a psycho-analytical explanation, she does drop hints as to Leda’s own family background in Naples, her father coming from violent and vulgar association. Her mother had threatened abandonment verbally to her children but never did. To Leda, her mother was better off escaping and disappeared. “How ashamed I was to have come out of the belly of such an unhappy person,” she laments.

Leda left her family at eighteen to go to Florence for more cultured and academic pursuit, determined to sever an undesirable family tie. While the little girl Elena is lost for a short while on the beach, Leda herself could well be the lost daughter that had never been found.

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Olivia Colman as Leda in The Lost Daughter directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal

The Lost Daughter movie adaptation is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut. She has a strong cast, notably Olivia Colman (The Favourite, The Crown) as Leda. Colman slips into the character perfectly and gives a natural and nuanced performance. Jessie Buckley as young Leda is another appropriate choice. The talented singer actor plays an exhausted mother convincingly. While away from her daughters and husband at a conference, she has an affair with a prominent academic, Professor Hardy, played by Gyllenhaal’s husband Peter Sarsgaard, whose performance carries traces of another role he’d played years ago as the smooth seducer David in Carey Mulligan’s breakout feature An Education (2009).

Other supporting cast is also strong with Dakota Johnson as Nina and Ed Harris as Lyle the seaside rental caretaker. It’s interesting to see his short interactions with Leda reveal Leda’s unreliable perception of others. Paul Mescal plays Will who works at the beach, reprising an understated performance as in Normal People (2020, TV series), adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel.

Gyllenhaal has mastered the story idea aptly, developing the screenplay like a character study which it ought to be. The effect of a handheld roving camera adds immediacy and suspense as we follow Leda in her short but eventful seaside vacation. Patricia Highsmith comes to mind. Gyllenhaal has altered the Neapolitan protagonist and the rowdy family into American, Leda from Cambridge near Boston, and the disruptive family as American tourists.

The present is interspersed with flashbacks seamlessly to depict Leda’s early years as a young mother torn between the constant demands of child-caring and her personal needs and ambition. Professor Hardy during his lecture in the conference mentions a quote by Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” At the time, to a young and rising academic, the relevance had not sunk in for Leda.

Overall a stirring screen adaptation with superb performance. However, one crucial element in the book has been left out and just replaced with a few dialogues and that’s Leda’s own family background and a mother who had always wanted to abandon her children. The lack of a more solid backstory about Leda’s own upbringing stirs up questions as to her present behaviour. Of course, as a two-hour movie, Gyllenhaal has the difficult task of choosing what to leave out from the book. The missed component of Leda’s own lack of maternal attention while growing up could have stripped off a deeper layer in the storytelling.

The ending is reaffirming. It’s good to know that Leda’s two daughters are forgiving young women, as they care for their mother and check up on her via long distance while she’s by herself on a seaside vacation in Greece. It’s good to see too that ‘bad mothering’ doesn’t need to perpetuate.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

The Lost Daughter is now streaming on Netflix.

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Books to Screen in 2022

What to read and watch in this new year? Here’s a list of movie adaptations, some just announced, some in development and some filming. If Omicron doesn’t have its way and productions can continue, we’ll likely see them come out this year. Of course, things are as fluid as ever, but the books are always there for us to explore.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

To be directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, 2017) with a star-studded cast including Andrew Garfield, Cate Blanchett, Ralph Fiennes, Joe Alwyn and Rooney Mara. Although the 2008 rendition is a fine one, I welcome a fresh take. Andrew Garfield has proven to be highly versatile, would make an effective Charles Ryder. I’m eager to see Cate Blanchett as Lady Marchmain, and Ralph Fiennes would likely deliver lots of drama, especially under the helm of Guadagnino.

The Cactus by Sarah Haywood

Published in Jan 2018, selected as Reese’s Book Club pick in June 2019, the adaptation will likely star Reese Witherspoon as the protagonist Susan Green, who is unexpectedly pregnant at 45. Currently a feature film in development by Netflix. The short phrases on the cover make an effective blurb: ‘It’s never too late to bloom,’ and this one: ‘Even the prickliest cactus has its flower.’

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

With every book she published, Irish author Rooney is shot to a higher plane. Conversations with Friends is her debut novel, followed by the acclaimed Normal People, which already has an impressive screen adaptation. Beautiful World, Where Are You is her notable latest whose film rights will likely be snatched up soon I presume. Conversations with Friends is a simpler and more quiet novel, not less entangled with human relationships, with two young people grappling with love and life. Coming out this year as a series on Hulu.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

The film rights of this wildly popular, food-rich memoir of Zauner growing up Korean American has been sold to MGM’s Orion Pictures. Zauner will be adapting her book to the screen, chronicling her growing up as a mixed race gal in Oregon, and how her relationship with her cancer stricken mother has led her to discover her Asian root. Zauner will also provide the soundtrack for the feature with her own indie music band Japanese Breakfast.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico

Several of Paul Gallico’s stories had been adapted onto screen, on top of his own screenwriting work. This one sounds cheery, just right for an uncertain new year. Mrs. Harris, a London charlady, discovers Dior when tidying the fancy wardrobe of one of her clients, Lady Dant. Paris becomes her dream and goal. When finally she has saved enough to head over to the House of Dior in Paris, she finds a new world and adventure awaits her. Delightful, isn’t it? What’s more enticing is the cast, two ladies, Leslie Manville and Isabel Huppert.

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

This will be the second adaptation of Ferrante’s works, after The Lost Daughter (my Ripple review coming soon.) Another Netflix development, The Lying Life will be a series to be shot in Naples. Giovanna is a young woman growing up in Neapolitan society struggling to navigate the adult world and seeking for what’s real. The series will be in Italian, but just like Ferrante’s books, the appeal and relevance will be international.

She Said by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey

Subtitled: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement. NYT journalists Kantor and Twohey were winners of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for their work in exposing the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s longtime sexual misconduct, incendiary journalism that led to the #MeToo Movement. Screen adaptation directed by Maria Schrader; Carey Mulligan plays Twohey, Zoe Kazan as Kantor, Patricia Clarkson, editor Rebecca Corbett. Mulligan is an ideal cast on the heels of her impressive Oscar nominated role in Promising Young Woman.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

A. J. Fikry is a bookseller whose personal life is just as disappointing as the sales of his books. While there are people around him who are steadfast in their support for him, it’s an unexpected package, a baby, outside his door one fateful day that turns his life around and gives him a new view of things. A booklovers’ story. Screenplay written by the author Zevin, directed by Hans Canosa.

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

Reviewed on the NYT as a Mennonite #MeToo novel, this time the Mennonite community Canadian author Toews writes about is fictional, and the horrors the girls and women experience therein make this a crime thriller. But Toews apparently intends more than just to shock. Deeper issues such as collective guilt, the existence of evil, and forgiveness are explored. Movie adaptation directed by the acclaimed Sarah Polley (Oscar nom Adapted Screenplay for Away From Her), great cast with Frances McDormand, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Ben Whishaw, Rooney Mara.

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans by Agatha Christie

This Christie mystery without Hercule Poirot but featuring two amateur sleuths was a beloved novel of British actor Hugh Laurie (Dr. House) back in his youth. He’ll write and direct the 3-part adaptation. Christie’s book, published in 1934, tells the story of two friends while looking for a golf ball discover a dying man whose last words––the eponymous title of the book––lead them to the investigation of the mystery. Laurie fans would be glad to actually see him in a role as Dr. Nicholson.