The Rainbow (1989)
Directed by Ken Russell

Film Review

Twenty years after he made the definitive screen adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love (1969), maverick director Ken Russell finally got round to adapting the novel that preceded it, although in doing so he threw out most of the content and focussed on the final segment, which dealt with the romantic entanglements of Ursula Brangwen - an act of sacrilege, some would argue. The Rainbow has precious little of the artistic and dramatic flair of Russell's previous Lawrencean fling and is a pretty lacklustre affair - passionless, plodding and mired in the heavy symbolism that now makes much of Lawrence's work such a challenge to read whilst sober.

The excellence of the performances of the supporting cast is not matched by those of the leads who are frankly disappointing.  The most convincing performance is provided by Glenda Jackson, who plays the mother of the character she played in Women in Love. Throughout the film Paul McGann looks as if he is dying a slow death from acute boredom and Sammi Davis has neither the talent nor the charisma to carry off the part of Ursula with any conviction.  The sequences where this ill-matched duo frolic in their birthday suits in a pretty pastoral setting are neither artistic nor erotic, just an ugly exhibition of pointless self-indulgence carried to ludicrous extremes. For a director who is renowned for his artistic excesses, The Rainbow is a disappointingly tame work, but what makes it so unbearable to watch is that it seems to completely miss the point of Lawrence's great novel.

Film Synopsis

In the late 1800s, Ursula Brangwen is determined to lead her own life, in defiance of the conventions of the time and her parents' expectations.  For a while, she pursues a lesbian love affair with her schoolteacher and then decides that she too wants to become a schoolmistress.   She falls in love with a handsome Polish soldier Anton Skrebensky but, after a torrid affair, the passion soon burns itself out...