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Bloody Feast

Photo by Simon Mein

Lost Soul: Embeth Davidtz searches for her missing lover

Merchant Ivory leaves the

drawing room behind in a

violent adaptation of

H.E. Bates' 'Feast of July'

By Gordon Young

English writer H.E. Bates' best work--including the novel Feast of July--concerns velleities, unspoken desires and inchoate feelings. Anthony Burgess summed it up well when he wrote that Bates was more like Chekhov than O. Henry in the way he sought to reveal "some small human truth in rather drab and ordinary human circumstances." It is not an approach that seems to lend itself to film adaptations. Even Bates' popular and comic novels lack the obviousness cinema often demands.

So it comes as no surprise that the emotional nuance driving (or not driving) the characters in Bates' novel was lost somewhere along the journey to celluloid. Rather than being complex, the beautiful Bella Ford (Embeth Davidtz of Schindler's List) comes off as incomprehensible.

Her motivations remain unclear after she is taken in by the Wainwright family following a near-death experience, setting off a battle for her affections among the three Wainwright sons. She seems too strong-willed to agonize over her former lover, a buffoonish Casanova named Arch Wilson (Greg Wise), for whom she is searching. And she appears too intelligent for Con Wainwright, an allegedly sensitive introvert who comes off more like an idiot savant thanks to Ben Chaplin's overwrought portrayal. It's easy to imagine Bella feeling sorry for this open-mouthed breather but not falling in love with him.

Likewise, Con's troubling jealousies and insecurities are never fully explained. We are left with only his shocking actions minus the emotional context necessary to explain them. A scene depicting a disturbing hallucination experienced by Con hints at his mental instability, but that only clouds his motives. Is he pathological or just plain stupid?

Don't expect a typical Merchant Ivory Production full of charming landscapes and drawing-room intrigue. Feast of July is set in the stark, vaguely menacing English countryside as the Victorian era comes to a close and the Industrial Revolution makes its presence felt throughout England.

The interior scenes are purposely claustrophobic, and the world seems to constantly close in on the characters. Like a highbrow Quentin Tarantino, director Christopher Menaul gives us a bloody miscarriage, a hanging complete with sound effects, a sex scene in a shepherd's hut, a cinéma vérité shot of the female lead upchucking, and a working-class duel between two harvesters wielding sickle and rake. The brooding soundtrack lets you know when something bad is in the works, but the characters never quite let you know why.

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Feast of July (R; 118 min.), directed by Christopher Menaul, written by Christopher Neame, based on the novel by H.E. Bates, photographed by Peter Sova and starring Embeth Davidtz, Gemma Jones, Ben Chaplin and Greg Wise.


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