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Quartet (1981)
Director: James Ivory
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
An adaptation of Jean Rhys' semi-autobiographical novel (for another angle on the affair, see Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier), in which a victim of circumstances, stranded in the Paris of the '20s when her con-man husband is jailed, becomes subject to the predatory help of a hedonistic upper class English couple. Maggie Smith and Alan Bates successfully personify the cold spirit that Rhys held to be pre-war England, but Adjani manages merely to reduce Marya's fatalism to spinelessness. The direction, intimate yet retaining a sense of distance, is true both to Rhys and to Ivory.Author: FD
Cast & crew
Director: James Ivory
Producer: Ismail Merchant, Jean-Pierre Mahot de La Querantonnais
Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Anthony Higgins, Maggie Smith, Alan Bates, Pierre Clémenti, Daniel Mesguich, Suzanne Flon full cast
Duration: 101 mins
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