The Inheritance (1997)
Aug. 14th, 2023 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
m_of_disguiseIt's such a shame when good costuming happens in bad movies. I just watched a 90s costume film called The Inheritance, based on Louisa May Alcott's then-recently-discovered first manuscript. The acting was terrible. Hotch from Criminal Minds plays the love interest with about as much emotion as a walnut. The music was atrocious (90s made-for-TV movie stuff) and the conflict was so downplayed that it felt inconsequential. The characters are completely two-dimensional - the heroine is all good all the time, the love interest is in love with our heroine and that's all the personality he gets, the daughter is bookish, the villains are bad because we need villains (though the villainess get the added motivation of she wants a man but all the men, literally every single one of them, only want heroine), etc.
But the clothes were fabulous. It's set in the 1870s, so we get lots of gorgeous bustle gowns. The hair was good! The makeup was very 90s, but it was only really noticeable on the mother figure. There are fabulous ballgowns! Sure it's not Age of Innocence levels of drool-worthy, but it was nice eye candy all the same.
The original book was written in 1849 and is apparently very much in the gothic style. I think the film could have benefited from a more gothic air. The villainess tries to frame the heroine for stealing jewels! The secondary potential love interest attempts to assault the heroine in the dead of night, which causes the heroine's father to have a heart attack! The film just sort of rushes through these events and concludes them hastily and they don't have much umph to them. Apparently the conflict in the book is similarly low-key, with one reviewer describing the entire book as "peaceful escapism, even during conflict."
It's one of those films I could see benefiting from a remake. Apparently this was the only adaptation of the manuscript, so it's a practically untapped source for filmmakers!
But the clothes were fabulous. It's set in the 1870s, so we get lots of gorgeous bustle gowns. The hair was good! The makeup was very 90s, but it was only really noticeable on the mother figure. There are fabulous ballgowns! Sure it's not Age of Innocence levels of drool-worthy, but it was nice eye candy all the same.
The original book was written in 1849 and is apparently very much in the gothic style. I think the film could have benefited from a more gothic air. The villainess tries to frame the heroine for stealing jewels! The secondary potential love interest attempts to assault the heroine in the dead of night, which causes the heroine's father to have a heart attack! The film just sort of rushes through these events and concludes them hastily and they don't have much umph to them. Apparently the conflict in the book is similarly low-key, with one reviewer describing the entire book as "peaceful escapism, even during conflict."
It's one of those films I could see benefiting from a remake. Apparently this was the only adaptation of the manuscript, so it's a practically untapped source for filmmakers!
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Date: 2023-08-14 05:54 pm (UTC)