The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)

Romantic drama adapted by Harold Pinter from the John Fowles novel and directed by Karel Reisz. 

Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons play two couples: one in Victorian times and one in the present day. They are different people but their relationships, then and now, have many parallels exploring the nature of obsessive love. 

I’m not entirely convinced that the interweaving of the two stories works. Both would have been enough for a film in themselves, and the present-day narrative is sketchier, meaning that motivations and character are less fleshed out. Also, it's distracting that the some of the same actors (but not all of them) appear in both stories, but in unrelated roles that I imagined would be connected. I would have hoped to see more of Penelope Wilton (who bafflingly only appears in one of the two tales), but that might just be because I like Penelope Wilton. 

Despite some tricksy aspects, it’s compelling and the acting is first rate. 

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