May the world not think from now on of Hester Prynne as Demi Moore in a candle cap. They meet in a forest mudhole, where Arthur rescues Hester so she can make it to the church on time in the Puritan colony that already frowns on her independent ways.
Combustion is immediate.
Puritan New England is a strange stage for Demi Moore, who nurtures an inexhaustible need for America's appreciation of her naked perfection. She is quite good at what she does, which is orgasm, birth, and general suffering. Part II is the long descent from slack-jawed passion to tormented suffering. In a final melee that never flowed from Hawthorne's pen, an explosion of fashionable violence engulfs the film. The movie is studded with piercing reminders that the emotional brutality Hawthorne rendered so well still thrives as an unbroken thread of hypocrisy wherever power is concentrated.