Ralph Fiennes’ ambition to make us rethink Charles Dickens who was not the cuddly, cosy man so often portrayed is an admirable one. While The Invisible Woman has many merits, it still cannot escape the feeling that essentially he was a dull man, and the mood of the film is so claustrophobic and static that it ends up being a frustrating exercise, which is a shame as it could have been more.
The underlying idea is a very strong one. Dickens, at the height of his fame, with wealth, friends and money, has superficial happiness but is bored with his frumpy wife Catherine (a superb Joanna Scanlon). He is part of a theatre company which includes fellow writer Wilkie Collins (a brilliant Tom Hollander) and is introduced to thespian family the Ternans, ruled by the fragile Frances (a brittle Kristin Scott Thomas). She has three daughters, all aspiring actresses, including the pretty Nelly (Felicity Jones).
Dickens slowly but surely becomes infatuated with Nelly’s charms, but and here is the crux it is never clear exactly why. Yes she’s attractive, in a drippy sort of way, but is clearly no actress, nor is she an intellectual, a writer or much company in general. If he is clearly projecting something onto her lost youth, a chance to start again, whatever it is never made clear in Abi Morgan’s confused script what exactly it is. “My wife understands nothing she feels nothing he bellows at Nelly who, instead of running for the hills from what looks suspiciously like a dirty old man, hangs around. Eventually they escape together on an ill-fated trip to France, and on their return to England nothing is ever quite the same again.
We see Dickens the charmer, the successful fund-raiser and raconteur, charming with strangers, pleasant to his friends, especially Collins, but we never quite grasp why he is so taken with a blank canvas of a girl. One interesting scene, where her values cannot bring herself to accept Collins’ terrible sin of living with a woman outside of marriage, comes to nothing Dickens merely dismissed it with a wave of his hand. If he is projecting, he isn’t doing it very well.
There are a couple of memorable scenes, one where he confronts his own son on a heath Charlie is about the same age as Nelly, and cannot bring himself to look his adulterous father in the eye. Another is when Nelly is confronted with Catherine, who sadly admits defeat in the clamour for Dickens’ attentions.
Fiennes and Jones also worked together in Cemetery Junction (2010), in which they played father and daughter. In a 2013 interview, Jones said that it was “weird” and “very Freudian” to go from playing one relationship to the other, but Fiennes disagreed, saying “It’s just a job. Come on. What is strange about this anecdote is it fails to explain the lack of sexual chemistry between the two of them. Fiennes merely gazes at Nelly as if she is a bird about to take flight, while Jones, for much of the movie, merely pouts and looks fed up. In the press notes Fiennes says “the camera reads something inside of her, by which he presumably means indigestion judging by the look on her face.
It would be unfair though to dismiss it totally there is a strong film in here somewhere. A sequence in a train carriage has a huge power and devastating consequences, and the film does look and sound a treat, with strong performances to match. It’s just a shame Morgan was involved, she brings the same awkwardness and waffle as she did to The Hour and many of her plays.
Overall verdict: Frustratingly shallow tale with a made-for-TV sensibility, about the love of an older man for a young woman. It could, and should, have been so much more engaging than it is, which is a shame given the huge amount of talent on show.
Reviewer: Mike Martin