One of the story's mysteries is just when each of them becomes erotically aware of the other, and there is a moment, when he goes out to get beer from the car, and she pauses while preparing salad, when she not quite smiles to herself. She seems happy; there is a lift in her heart. In another scene, she answers the telephone and, standing behind him, adjusts his collar, brushes his neck with her finger, and then leaves her hand resting on his shoulder. Very quietly.
Eastwood and his cinematographer, Jack N. Green, find a wonderful play of light, shadow and candlelight in the key scenes across the kitchen table, with jazz and blues playing softly on a radio. They understand that Richard and Francesca are not falling in love with each other, exactly -- that takes time, when you are middle-aged -- but with the idea of their love, with what Richard calls "certainty." One of the sources of the movie's poignancy is that the flowering of the love will be forever deferred; they will know they are right for each other, and not follow up on their knowledge.
Robert wants her to leave with him. The notion is enormously attractive to her. Life on the farm is "not what I dreamed of when I was a girl." She envies his life of travel. Not understanding quite how tied she is to the land, he suggests her husband could take her "on a safari." Her smile shows what a wild idea that is. "What's he like?" Robert asks. "He's very clean," she replies. "Hard-working . . . gentle . . . a good father."
And he is. The story never makes the mistake of portraying Richard Johnson as a bad husband. But we have seen, in an early scene, that there is no conversation around the Johnson family dinner table. With Robert Kincaid, there is much conversation; they talk of their ideals, and she says, "But how can you live for just what you want?" And, quietly, "We are the choices that we have made, Robert." And they talk on, quoting Yeats, smoking Camels, dancing to the radio.
All of the scenes involving Eastwood and Streep find the right notes and shadings. The surrounding story -- involving Francesca's adult son and daughter finding her diaries and reading her story after her death -- is not as successful. I know this framing mechanism, added by writer Richard LaGravenese, is necessary; thewhole emotional tone of the romance depends on it belonging to the lost past. And yet Annie Corley and Victor Slezak, as Caroline and Michael, never seem quite real, and Michael's shock at his mother's behavior, in particular, seems forced, like a story device. The payoff at the end -- as they reassess their own lives -- seems perfunctory.
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