A vastly underrated film in which the real life metaphor of prison and escape mirrors a nineteenth century woman’s life prison of lovelessness and respectability. In it, Diane Keaton gives a performance that seems to be of a piece with the director, Gillian Armstrong’s, strong sense of black–black in the clouds, black in Mrs. Soffel’s high necked costuming, the black in her lover’s hair. Mrs. Soffel, like Masha before her, is in morning for her life, but what is her life? To discover that, you have to see the movie, and even then we don’t know: the film ends in silence, with Mrs. Soffel gazing at the image of her dead lover, her dead and living past falling about her like the folds of her skirt, the folds of the prison bars that cuts her face into twos and threes and our hearts into twos and threes as well as the camera leaves Mrs. Soffel to her memories and her love, with its plot thickening sadness, and regret.
Morning?
But the metaphor of the folds is lovely.