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Dreaming Of Joseph Lees

1998, Movie, R, 92 mins

Dreaming Of Joseph Lees: Review

DREAMING OF JOSEPH LEES
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A small-scale domestic drama in which extraordinary things happen to extremely ordinary people. The year is 1958, and subdued, intelligent Eva (Samantha Morton) lives with her father and much younger siblings in a small, bleak English country town. She works at the sawmill and is being courted by Harry Flyte (Lee Ross), an eager-to-please local farm-boy. (Contemporary viewers will detect a hint of the stalker in the manic persistence of his pursuit.) Eva carries a secret torch for her slightly older second cousin, Joseph Lees (Rupert Graves), whom she last saw when she was 14. Joseph became a geologist, went to Italy and lost a leg in a quarry accident, all hugely exotic events to the sheltered but imaginative Eva. Despite her secret pining, Eva's too sensible to become a reclusive spinster; taking the path of least resistance, she drifts into a relationship with Harry. But she quietly hedges her bets, defying convention to move in with Harry without embracing the finality of marriage. A family wedding finally brings Eva and Joseph back together, and their mutual interests in art, books and the world beyond England's insular shores create an instant bond. What, now, is Eva to do? Pursue her dream lover, or return to the life she's allowed to fall into place around her? This languorous, mud-spattered psychological tale is what you'd get if you laid bare the emotional pathologies underlying the swank romantic trappings of swoonily masochistic melodramas like LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN. Of course, much of melodrama's appeal lies in the trappings: The fantasy of heart-thrilling passion is more appealing than having one's nose rubbed in the facts that secret crushes rarely work out and that there's a world of degrading misery in unrequited romance. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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