A Promise - film review

This full-blown period romance, set in pre-First World War Germany, stars Rebecca Hall as a faithful wife upended by passion
4 September 2013

Rebecca Hall, last seen in UK cinemas in Iron Man 3 and Closed Circuit, could hardly be in a more different kind of film than A Promise for French director Patrice Leconte.

She plays the young wife of a successful but ailing industrialist (Alan Rickman) who falls hopelessly in love with the youthful man (John Madden) he is training to be his successor.

The film is a full-blown period romance taken from a story by Steven Zweig and set in pre-First World War Germany.

The question we ask ourselves is whether the industrialist, knowing he is dying of heart disease, has deliberately set up the romance to give his wife the chance of a decent life after his death.

The answer is eventually clear. Although he is sacrificing his own happiness for the sake of his wife, the older man in the end can’t bear to see her falling for his intended successor, sending him off to Mexico for two years. Then the war breaks out and nothing is as it was.

Such a heavily romantic story needs to be told with proper sensitivity to hold it together, and Leconte, an experienced director of classic French films like Monsieur Hire, knows exactly what he is doing.

And so does Hall, who paints a portrait of a faithful wife upended by passion that saves the film from cliché. Madden, as a young man on the make, plays with skill, and Rickman’s expressive subtlety is a given.

But this is principally Hall’s film as she slowly but surely falls for the handsome maestro who will one day take over the firm. If it is an old-fashioned film, it is none the worse for that.

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