The Bridge

Another of those parasol and starched linen Vic-wardian costumers of TV drama dimensions, this time the account of an impossible romantic liaison between a beautiful and sensitive married mother (Reeves) and the youthful Impressionist painter Philip Wilson Steer (O'Hara). Based on the novel by Maggie Hemingway, the film takes its mood from a Steer painting: an enigmatic depiction of a lone woman on a remote Suffolk bridge. Despite being well acted (especially by Reeves), well scripted, finely shot by David Tattersall, and directed with discretion and sensitivity, the result is enervatingly familiar and too tastefully corseted in propriety to arouse the least passion. The working classes, of course, are the ones who don't have sunlight artistically highlighting their despairing faces.