Fingersmiths by Aisling Walsh (2005)
7 July 2008Another sumptuous adaption of a story of betrayal an lust set in Victorian England from a novel by Sarah Waters. This too has some lesbian story elements, though they are not as front and center as those in Tipping the Velvet. This is a very enjoyable BBC series, with great cinematography and acting, and a story that will have you on the edge of your seat until the end, because their are more twists and turns here than you can shake a stick at. It is good that the BBC went for 180 minutes because this story would have suffered from being shorter. Certainly worth checking out.
This is the story of two girls whose lives will be intertwined, a young orphan named Sue Trinder (Sally Hawkins) who has been brought up by a group of fingersmiths (Thieves) led by Mrs Sucksby (Imedla Staunton) and Maud Lilly (Elaine Cassidy) the daughter of a woman who went mad, and was raised in a mad house, only to be taken in by her strict and strange uncle (Charles Dance) to become his secretary. A young charlatan involved with Mrs Sucksby named Richard Rivers (Rupert Evans) hatches a plot to get mary Maud, and get her $40,000 pound inheritance and then put her in a mad house, by using Sue as her maid (so Sue will get $3000 pounds). The plan seems simple, if diabolical enough, but things start to awry when Sue starts to develop feelings for Maud, and doesn’t want her to be taken in by Rivers.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Sue starts sleeping with Maud to calm her bad dreams, and really enjoys being in her company, and is even distraut when Maud agrees to marry Rivers. Then one night, the sheltered Maud asks Sue what her wifely duties will be, and the two make love, but Sue can’t bring herself to tell the truth, that she loves Maude, and the scheme continues.
Finally Maud and Sue leave and Maud marries Rivers and heads to a cottage, where they begin to set up Maud to be a mad woman, and bring in doctors to bring her to a mental hospital, and when they arrive instead Maud being put away, in a huge twist Sue is put away, with them saying she is Mrs. Rivers.
We then cut back to show how Maud could do this, and we see that in fact Maud’s secretarial duties were for his pornographic books, and she gave readings and showed the pornography to his friends, so she was already cold and detached, but soon after Mr. Rivers arrived to teach her art, he confided in her, and made a deal to get themselves her $40,000 dowry, which they would split, and they would send Sue in to the Mad house as Mrs. Rivers, so that the Uncle would not look for her, and they could escape.So she was working against Sue fromt he start, though she did start to care for her, and purposely seduced the other girl. And the night she left, she also ruined her uncles pornography collection.
Rivers’s then brings Maud into the city, where she introduced to Mrs Sucksby, who it turns out was running the scam the whole time. And it turns out that in fact Sue is Lilly’s niece, and not Maud, who is in fact Mrs. Sucksby’s daughter, and both she and Sue are left half of the large dowry when they turn 21.
MEanwhile Sue manages to escape the mad house, to go back to Mrs. Sucksby, but when she finds Rivers and Maud there she comes in with a knife in hand, and in the scuffle Maud ends up stabbing Rivers and killing hi, but when the cops arrive, Mrs Sucksby takes the blame and the death sentence.
Sue visits the woman she treats as her mom, and Sucksby doesn’t reveal the truth, and when Maud visits, Maud admits she is her mom, and promises not to tell Sue the truth, but after the hangingSue collects Sucksby’s clothes and finds her mothers will, and realizes who she is and who Maud is. She then goes to find Maud.
Sue heads to the old estate, since Uncle Lily had a stroke and died, and finds Maud. Maud tells her she is not the innocent she thought she was, and in fact now writes sapphic pornography to get by, and when they nock over the papers, Maud asks what is in them, and Maud tells Sue that it is all about loving her, and the two kiss.
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Quite an enjoyable movie. And I really was totally tricked, not knowing the twists and turns at all!
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