David Denby

“A familiar Victorian parable unfolds: Mrs. Soffel, unhappily married to the warden . . ., covers her misery with good works. Dutifully, she goes among the prisoners, passing Bibles and blankets through the bars--an angel of light trembling in her black dress. . . . Ed . . . sets about seducing Mrs. Soffel--not by charming her but by taunting her faith in God. If God were just, he says, would he allow an innocent man to hang? Sardonic and fiery, and then courtly, even gentle, he catches her imagination, and in a burst of sympathy, she helps the Biddles escape….

“It really happened (in 1901), but the story is still a bit of wheeze: One waits, without much expectation of surprise, for sex to overwhelm piety (there's no movie if it doesn't). But the two stars are magnetic. Her hair in a bun, Diane Keaton has an almost Hepburn-like quality this time--taut, hypersensitive, with a touch of primness in the set of the long, elegant jaw, yet yielding and deeply romantic. A few perverse moments raise the performance to the level of brilliance. At one moment, nestling inside her high black collar, she glares at her husband with unaccustomed disdain, and she looks startlingly wicked; this American Victorian housewife could be Anna Karenina preparing to betray Karenin. When she brings Mel Gibson a couple of narrow saws, and he reaches through the bars and under her skirts, removing the instruments from her boots, she laughs delightedly, with the voluptuous pleasure of a child eating forbidden goodies--the first sign of real happiness….

“The two star performances might have caused a sensation if Gillian Armstrong had let them expand a bit…. [Armstrong] creates a little prison of her own--the austere compositions, the silence, the discretion of a directorial style that places a higher premium on discipline and consistency than expression…. [E]ven after the Biddles and Mrs. Soffel have escaped, the movie remains forbiddingly dark…. [A]ll this severity works against the film's meanings. Mrs. Soffel, in the arms of her lover, is happy and free. Why can't a little color come into her life? Mrs. Soffel never breaks loose--it's a muted, bewilderingly constrained and monotonous film. Despite all the talent at work in it, one still has to fight off the enfolding arms of sleep.”

David Denby
New York, January 14, 1985