Main Cast: Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Annie Corley, Victor Slezak, Jim Haynie
Release Year: 1995
Country: US
Run Time: 135 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
The brief, illicit love affair between an Iowa housewife and a post-middle-age free-lance photographer is chronicled in this powerful romance based on the best-selling novella by Robert James Waller. The story begins as globetrotting National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid journeys to Madison County in 1965 to film its lovely covered bridges. Upon his arrival, he stops by an old farmhouse to ask directions. There he encounters housewife, Francesca Johnson, whose spouse and two children are out of town. Thus begins their four-day affair, a liaison that fundamentally changes them both. Later Francesca chronicles the affair in a diary which her flabbergasted grown children read; never would they have expected their mother to be capable of the passion she experienced with Kincaid. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Review
A far better film than it really has any right to be, Clint Eastwood's adaptation of Robert James Waller's bestselling novel converts a breathlessly overwrought piece of writing into a moving melodrama in the classic mold. Though it starts badly and comes to a halt every time it returns to its modern day framing device, whenever the film concentrates on the illicit romance of Eastwood and Streep -- which is most of the film -- it serves as a model of understated direction and unimpeachable performances. An unlikely pairing of acting styles, Eastwood and Streep perfectly embody their unlikely lovers. Playing a woman realizing for the first time that she might not be resigned to a life of underappreciated boredom, Streep strikes the right note of nervousness and ecstasy. But unlike its most immediate model, Brief Encounter, since it dwells equally on both lovers, the film turns on Eastwood's performance. Here he transforms his character from a figure of fantasy into a fully-realized man who slowly recognizes his own unspoken loneliness. Though the film's final act drags on well past its emotional climax, as a director Eastwood -- working form a script by Richard LaGravenese -- elsewhere avoids indulgence and always stays away from overt sentimentality, allowing his film to work as a heartbreaking story of hard choices and unrealized dreams. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide
Kyle Eastwood - James River Band #6; Phyllis Lyons - Betty; Debra Monk - Madge; David Gilbert; George Orrison - Cafe Patron
Credit
Bill Arnold - Art Director, Michael Maurer - Associate Producer, Ellen Chenoweth - Casting, Colleen Kelsall - Costume Designer, Clint Eastwood - Director, Joel Cox - Editor, Lennie Niehaus - Composer (Music Score), Stephen Campanelli - Camera Operator, Jeannine Oppewall - Production Designer, Jack N. Green - Cinematographer, Clint Eastwood - Producer, Kathleen Kennedy - Producer, Jay R. Hart - Set Designer, Steve Riley - Special Effects, Willie D. Burton - Sound/Sound Designer, Jim Behnke - Unit Production Manager, Richard LaGravenese - Screenwriter, Robert James Waller - Book Author
