The Heart of Me

Infobox Film
name = The Heart of Me


image_size = 250px
director = Thaddeus O'Sullivan
writer = Rosamond Lehmaan
Lucinda Coxon
starring = Helena Bonham Carter
Olivia Williams
Paul Bettany
music = Ray Noble and Gustav Holst
cinematography = Ben Davis
editing = Jon Harris
distributor = Paramount Pictures
released = flagicon|UK 2 May, 2003
flagicon|USA 13 June, 2003
runtime = 96 min.
country = United Kingdom
Germany
language = English
imdb_id = 0301390

" The Heart of Me " is a 2003 British period drama film directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan. Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Paul Bettany, and Olivia Williams. Set in London before and after World War II, it depicts the consequences of a woman's torrid affair with her sister's husband. The film is an adaptation of Rosamond Lehmann's novel "The Echoing Grove". "The Heart of Me" was filmed in the Isle of Man and premiered at Toronto Film Festival on September 6 2002.

Plot

In 1934 after the death of her father, Madeleine, a very proper and very repressed well off housewife, invites her free-spirited sister Dinah to stay with her and her husband Rickie in her elegant London home. The couple has a young son, Anthony. Madeleine has always been secretly jealous and resentful of Dinah, a raffish bohemian painter, who is the despair of her conservative sister and their mother. Madeleine at last contrives to get Dinah engaged to a presentable man. Dinah announces her engagement at a family dinner, but later that night Rickie, who has long harbored an attraction for her, tells her to finish the betrothal. As they spend time together their affair becomes physical, even all the way; yet when she gets pregnant they decide to leave his marriage intact. He raises his son with Madeleine, who tells him only in 1946 that she knew after he had a car accident during a 'business trip' to southern France that caused Dinah to loose her unborn daughter; now Rickie wants to leave Madeleine, but she refuses a divorce; after a time in hospital he is told Dinah chose to move back to France without him while she's really living in London.

Cast

* Helena Bonham Carter - Dinah
* Olivia Williams - Madeleine
* Paul Bettany – Rickie
* Eleanor Bron - Mrs. Burkett
* Alison Reid – Bridie
* Luke Newberry - Anthony
* Tom Ward – Jack
* Gillian Hanna - Betty
* Andrew Havill – Charles

Reception

The movie had a mixed reception.

"...Quite well done, with a fine cast finding time between tears, anger, deception and recriminations to do some surprisingly strong and affecting acting..." — Los Angeles Times. "...The actors demonstrate such unmatchable Englishness that the movie -- a kind of The End of the Affair without the religious instruction -- takes on the gleam of a cultural artifact..." — Entertainment Weekly "...A film for the mind..." — Total Film

In his review Roger Ebert wrote: “Many of the complaints have to do with the fact that the characters are wealthy and upper class and speak English elegantly. The names of Merchant and Ivory are used like clubs to beat the film. This is the same kind of thinking that led Jack Warner to tell his producers, "Don't give me any more pictures where they write with feathers." The movie is about the punishment of being trapped in a system where appearances are more important than reality.”

Awards and nominations

*British Independent Film AwardsWon Olivia Williams

Nominated Helena Bonham Carter

*ALFS awards:Won Helena Bonham Carter

Nominated Paul Bettany

Quotes

The lovers in "The Heart of Me" have a line of poetry by William Blake as their touchstone: "And throughout all eternity, I forgive you and you forgive me." This implies much to forgive, and the movie involves a decade of suffering, punctuated by occasional bliss, and inspired by Rickie and Dinah misfortune in falling in love with one another. For theirs is not an ordinary adultery, but one complicated by the inconvenience that he is married to her sister.