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THE HANDMAID’S TALE
Rating: 
USA/Germany. 1990.
Director – Volker Schlondorff, Screenplay – Harold Pinter, Based on the Novel by Margaret Atwood, Producer – Danny Wilson, Photography – Igor Luther, Music – Ryuichi Sakamoto, Production Design – Tom Walsh. Production Company – Bioskop Film/Cinetudes Film Productions/Odyssey/Cinecom International.
Cast:
Natasha Richardson (Kate Offred), Robert Duvall (Fred, The Commander), Faye Dunaway (Serena Joy), Aidan Quinn (Nick), Elizabeth McGovern (Moira), Victoria Tennant (Aunt Lydia)
Plot: In the future in the fundamentalist Republic of Gilead, formerly the USA, 99% of the female population is sterile. One woman Kate is captured as she tries to cross the Northern Border with her lover and child, but is spared execution when it is discovered she is fertile. She is placed in a dormitory where she learns that she is to become a ‘handmaiden’ and will be sold to be impregnated by and bear the children of Gilead’s ruling elite. She becomes the property of the Commander Fred, now to be known only as ‘Of-Fred’. As the Commander makes effort to impregnate her, he also secretly befriends her in a forbidden relationship. At the same time Kate/Offred comes in contact with a rebel group who seek to exploit her friendship with the Commander.
Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed 1985 feminist parable comes to the screen here. The film holds a good deal of respectable clout with names like celebrated playwright Harold Pinter on script and actors such as Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall attached. But it somehow misses the mark. For one the finesse of Atwood’s often internal tale is bluntened and transformed into a portrait of a Dystopian society that is all written in the large, bold colours of Hollywood making a message. But there’s no credible resonance to the fundamentalism – the future world exists in a cultural vacuum. Characters have names like Aunt Lydia (a campy whip-cracking performance from Victoria Tennant) and Serena Joy that would seem to belong more on the cast list of an Andy Warhol film. There seems no real reason why the rituals of Ceremony with people dressed in coloured cloth and adopting various positions should have become the way they are. And moreover the film criminally alters Atwood’s ending for something more upbeat.
It was certainly the most commercially accessible film of German director Volker Schlondorff, best known for The Tin Drum (1979). Being a director more interested in a story’s images than its drama though, Schlondorff comes somewhat unstuck here. There a few inspired moments when Schlondorff gets to open up and display his visual flair – the aerial shot across the dormitory floor where the whispers of the girls introducing themselves spread around the room; or the first Ceremony with the veiled Natasha Richardson being forcibly held down on a bed between Faye Dunaway’s thighs while Robert Duvall performs the dispassionate act of sex.
Natasha Richardson’s coy, playful acting is very much out of place in a role that really requires her to become subservient and anonymous. But Robert Duvall is very good, as is Faye Dunaway’s controlled impatient performance. But best of all is Elizabeth McGovern who gives the film a rare sparkle of colour with her warm, cynically alert performance. The film around them though is rather dour and never quite manages to come to life.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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