Oscar and Lucinda
Director: Gillian Armstrong. Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett, Tom Wilkinson, Ciarán Hinds, Richard
Roxburgh. Screenplay: Laura Jones (from the novel by Peter Carey).
A fully, perhaps unexpectedly beguiling picture, Oscar and Lucinda is, to my mind, the Great Lost
Movie of 1997, the picture whose floating midwinter release date lost it helplessly but shamefully in the
post-holiday shuffle. To be fair, it's hard to imagine Gillian Armstrong's inspired, almost neurotic
character study achieving broad appeal in any movie season, but the virtues that so many moviegoers
missed out on comprise a long, distinguished list. The evocation of period in its costumes and sets is
flawless, and the twitchy, entrancing work of Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett proves that old but
often-forgotten rule that movie romance only works when the characters are not romanticized. Above
all, Geoffrey Simpson's sparkling cinematography, as taken by the magic of a well-baked plum pudding as it
is by a sunset on the water, was perhaps the year's best. I forget who said they had stopped going to
movies because they always knew what shot was coming next, but Oscar and Lucinda—smart, funny,
warming, and heartbreaking—provides a bounty of reasons for them, and us, to step back to the box
office. Grade:A