Film Comment magazine continues its march through some of the best movies of 2013 with another piece from its “Essential Cinema” supplement, this one on Ralph Fienne's The Invisible Woman, which screened as part of a mid-career tribute to Fiennes during the 51st New York Film Festival and is now playing in select theaters. Graham Fuller praises the film's dedication to its female protagonist despite the presence of Fiennes as Charles Dickens, saying it “feels like Fiennes’s feminine riposte to his overtly masculine Coriolanus.”
A timeless feminist parable about the plight of wives and mistresses who are unable to establish equality with their stronger lovers… The Invisible Woman is a near perfect example of a costume drama that makes no concession to the Downton Abbey school of novelettish melodrama. Beyond the use of chiaroscuro lighting, Dickensian ambience has been avoided in favor of uninflected naturalism.
