I remember this movie was panned by some critics. Sting was a target of their ironies.
When I had access to cable TV I could watch it for the first time and it seemed like a series of vignettes of Susan's different stages in life and I hated her. I thought she was self-centered and self-righteous. Despicable character. Well, that's what I thought when I was 18.
I watched it once again recently now as an adult and I had a different perspective. I saw a woman who spent her youth as part of an exciting period of history (WWII), risking her life for a cause that she thought was significant. When the war was over, the film shows her difficulty at fitting in back to her mundane life in England with a string of unsatisfactory jobs. The main issue here is that she tries to find a meaning to her life now that there is nothing to fight for. Her mind is still in France when she joined the resistance.
She is desperate to find something exciting again. So she finds a man to father a child (she doesn't want a relationship, just a man to get her impregnated) and fails, then, she marries a dull diplomatic employee who, for some reason, stands by her for more than a decade hoping for this selfish woman to appreciate him, and she fails. She's unlikeable, but at the same time realistic.
Add to the mix a mental illness and it's not a movie for the ones who expect a resolution. Because there's none. Just like real life. She feels empty in an upper-class world plenty of material things, but nothing of substance.
When I had access to cable TV I could watch it for the first time and it seemed like a series of vignettes of Susan's different stages in life and I hated her. I thought she was self-centered and self-righteous. Despicable character. Well, that's what I thought when I was 18.
I watched it once again recently now as an adult and I had a different perspective. I saw a woman who spent her youth as part of an exciting period of history (WWII), risking her life for a cause that she thought was significant. When the war was over, the film shows her difficulty at fitting in back to her mundane life in England with a string of unsatisfactory jobs. The main issue here is that she tries to find a meaning to her life now that there is nothing to fight for. Her mind is still in France when she joined the resistance.
She is desperate to find something exciting again. So she finds a man to father a child (she doesn't want a relationship, just a man to get her impregnated) and fails, then, she marries a dull diplomatic employee who, for some reason, stands by her for more than a decade hoping for this selfish woman to appreciate him, and she fails. She's unlikeable, but at the same time realistic.
Add to the mix a mental illness and it's not a movie for the ones who expect a resolution. Because there's none. Just like real life. She feels empty in an upper-class world plenty of material things, but nothing of substance.