The father-daughter team has incestuous undertones, and at one point, Maggie is reluctant to marry the Prince because it would mean spending less time with her father. Maggie, it can be argued, is an exemplary passive-aggressive predator. She wants to be close to her husband and her father, and she gets both without so much as thinking about it. Uma Thurman s Charlotte is, in many respects, the opposite. She thinks she s deceiving everyone with her plot to steal the Prince away, but in the end, she s not as resourceful as she thinks.
Money always wins out.
Thurman, delivering on the promise of her performance in Dangerous Liaisons , fills Charlotte with a great vivacity that, at times, is so overpowering that Charlotte nearly recoils from herself in fear. Jeremy Northam s Prince is also a sensual being who knows he s capable of terrible things. In the movie s single sex scene, the Prince and Charlotte make passionate love in a hotel room and feel little if any guilt afterwards. Nor do we because here at last are two people whose temperaments so perfectly match each others that nothing should keep them apart. And herein lies the reason The Golden Bowl ultimately succeeds as a movie.