The Heart of Me

Plot synopsis:
In 1934 after the death of her father, Madeleine, a proper and repressed well-off housewife, invites her free-spirited sister, Dinah, to stay with her and her husband Rickie in her elegant London home. The couple have a young son, Anthony. Madeleine has always been secretly jealous and resentful of Dinah, a raffish bohemian painter, who is the despair of her conservative sister and their mother, Mrs. Burkett. Madeleine at last contrives to get Dinah engaged to a respectable, well-off man. Dinah announces her engagement at a family dinner, but later that night Rickie, who has long harbored an attraction for her, tells her to end the engagement.
Rickie and Dinah fall in love and, during a New Year's Day party, they become lovers. Rickie helps Dinah to settle in an apartment that becomes their love nest, but leave his marriage intact. Things get complicated when Dinah gets pregnant. She decides to leave London with her friend Bridie and await the birth and Rickie's arrival in the south of England. During a snowstorm, Dinah gives birth to a stillborn daughter and almost dies from blood loss due to complications during the birth. Rickie, on his way to reach her, suffers a car accident and arrives too late. Grief-stricken, Dinah turns Rickie away and ends their affair. Rickie becomes lost in despair, but tries to hide it (unsuccessfully) from Madeleine. Months later, Madeleine receives a letter in the mail from Bridie who writes of the affair, leading Madeleine to the realization of what had been going on for quite some time. Rickie is adamant that the affair is finished, but he is unapologetic. Eventually Rickie meets unexpectedly with Dinah. She has a nervous breakdown at a restaurant and Rickie, still in love with her, tells Madeleine that he is leaving her.
Things, however, take a turn for the worse when Rickie collapses and is taken to the hospital, unknown to Dinah who is still home waiting for him. Dinah is prevented from seeing Rickie and is told by her mother and Madeleine that he has decided to return to his family, while they tell Rickie that she has gone back to France. Several more months pass and the lovers eventually meet again when Dinah is leaving the apartment that was being financed by Rickie, and he discovers that she had been there the entire time and not in France. Dinah, who is too hurt by things past, refuses to continue the affair and the lovers part for the last time.
During the war (World War II), Anthony, Rickie's and Madeleine's son, dies in battle. Rickie is killed during an air raid while going to claim a bracelet for Dinah that he had ordered from a jewelry store with the engraving: "And throughout all eternity, I forgive you and you forgive me". The film ends with Madeleine and Dinah finally reconciled to the past and learning to forgive each other.

Tags: romantic, flashback

Review:
The story of an upper class English man falling passionately in love with his wife's sister was so involving I completely forgot myself for the duration of the film (and from what I could see,so did the rest of the audience).
One of the wonderful things  about it was that during the course of the story I both liked and disliked all the characters.
This seems impossible given what Madeline has endured at the hands of her sister, yet  Williams makes us believe in that forgiveness.
She falls passionately in love with her brother- in- law  and from that moment on the film takes you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that I still can't get out of my mind.
It's  also a ravishing looking film (maybe that's why I cant get it out of my mind) and yet the powerful images never interfere with the story but add to it all the time.
I love Helena Bonham Carter and Paul Bettany.
On screen, the characters are so believable that I forget that I am watching a movie.
Despite the poetry in the film, it is mainly a movie of action, of eyes, beautiful, intense eyes.
Set primarily in the 1930's, the film tells the story of two sisters caught in a passionate and quasi-incestuous love triangle.
Madeline (Olivia Williams), the older of the two, is an uptight woman whose weak-willed husband, Rickie (Paul Bettany), falls in love with her younger and more free-spirited sibling, Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter).
These two in-laws, soul mates for life, carry on a torrid love affair until Madeline discovers the truth  and even for a time thereafter.
Instead, thanks to truly brilliant performances by the three principal actors and an intelligent, thoughtful screenplay, the film becomes a wholly absorbing drama that offers profound insights into the realities of the human heart.
The film becomes a fascinating study of what happens when clanging passions are hemmed in by the restrictions and proprieties of a strict, morally repressive upper class society.
What makes the film special is the way in which it allows the seemingly cold-hearted Madeline to become as much a sympathetic figure as the two impassioned lovers.
Thanks to Williams' impeccable performance (she played Penelope in the TV movie version of `The Odyssey'), Madeline is allowed to live and breathe and have her own say, making her, in many ways, the most intriguing of the three main characters.`The Heart of Me,' which is beautifully detailed in costumes and settings, transcends the limits of its genre to deliver a heartbreaking tale of love, loss, lament - and hope..
And that's what we have in this dark hued English drama whose scenes alternate between the pre-war social frivolity of affluent men and women unaware that their time was almost up and postwar scenes tieing the story together.Helena Bonham Carter is Dinah, a free spirit given to studying, and perhaps evangelizing, the gospel of malcontents and revolutionaries in that nonthreatening and oddly endearing manner that insures both bemusement and acceptance by well-to-do English gentlefolk.
Olivia Williams is her married sister, Madeleine, a hostess with the mostess, married to businessman Rickie, played by Paul Bettany.The focus of the film is on this trio, not a menage a trois but a coruscating set of characters wracked by love, lust and confusion leavened by sporadic betrayal and reconciliation.It's really simple:  Rickie sort of loves or at least very much likes Madeleine but his heart and other body parts desperately seek and need Dinah.
Dinah loves her sister and her charming adolescent son but she must have Rickie.
Helena Bonham Carter is renowned for her period pieces (she can do much more and she does) and she fits into London's prewar world and its gray aftermath as if she actually experienced those times.
Special mention must be made of Olivia Williams who captures the pathos, hope and desperation of a decent woman swept up by acts of betrayal she never envisaged as possible.
It is a European-style film that takes the time to give exposition and background to the characters.
Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Williams play sisters.
Helena's character begins to fall in love with her brother-in-law played by Paul Bettany and they have an affair.I was pleasantly surprised by Paul's acting.
I've only seen him before in "A Knight's Tale" and "A Beautiful Mind" where he has played light-hearted best friend characters.
Director Thaddeus O'Sullivan presents this story of love and betrayal with a style that is surprising.
The material in which this film is based is the novel by Rosamond Lehmann, that shows a slice of the life in London among the upper classes in the 30s, prior to WWII and adapted for the screen by Lucinda Coxon.The story of this love triangle involves Madeleine, a young society matron, married to Rickie, a successful bank executive.
She is a young woman who couldn't care less about being int the right places, or to mix with the right crowd.Dinah and Rickie begin an affair.
The relationship among the three principals will never be the same.Helena Bonham Carter plays Dinah with abandon.
Paul Bettany is convincing as Rickie, the man torn between love and duty.
at heart the story maybe about an illicit affair of forbidden love, but in reality it seems much more.
all three characters, Madeleine, Dinah and Ricky, are left unsatisfied and the pain that they feel makes the film challenging viewing - it is simply so sad.
what i liked most about the story is its time frame, as we weave through fifteen odd years and see the story, or rather the affair through the different perspective of time - it is such a clever technique because our sympathies never rest- we switch allegiance constantly and recognise that for these three people there could be no happy resolution.there is so much else to love about this film, i loved the way the large elegant house, appeared to take on the appearance of Madeleine's state of mind - all bright and happy in the beginning and then grey and sterile at the end.the film does have a fault i would say, though.
i do not like Helena Bonham carters performance.
it was partly because both Olivia Williams and Paul Bettany gave such wonderful performances that hers appears forced and insincere.
she grated on me because i really needed to believe that this woman was worthy of Ricky's obsessional love and i didn't.
Beyond the beautiful photography and brilliant performances in this fine film, it brings us an intimate view into one of this life's great challenges.
Having almost stepped into Ricky's shoes myself, this story clears away the fog of imagined outcomes to reveal the most essential, critical and invariable costs with their likely and possible consequences.These three characters, the husband Ricky, the wife Madeleine, and the sister Dinah, live lives well examined, know well the agony and the ecstasy of true love, of loving without reservation, and that life is short and then we're gone forever.
That true loves makes the gods jealous of our mortality.Perhaps there is a marriage of reason, and then an affair d'amour.
But this is their lives: this situation has much more depth than a simple love triangle, or a man lacking reason.
Can Ricky choose to not love Dinah?
And this story will help.The film steps through the traversal of events in quick succession, depending on our keen understanding to comprehend what may and may not possibly be happening to each character.
Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Williams show how to perform with perfect pitch the same sort of roles that Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and especially Julianne Moore trashed with overacting hyperbole in The Hours (although they were actualy models of restraint compared to Ed Harris - I couldn't wait for his character to throw himself out the window).
They are ably supported by Paul Bettany and the wonderful Eleanor Bron.This is not a movie for the 18 - 24 year old male demographic of course, but it will hold every intelligent viewer for its full 96 minutes (how wonderful - a moview well under 2 hours edited with self restraint)..
Overall the film affects great seriousness, but cannot escape the melodramatic and contrived nature of its source material (a pot-boiler-ish novel by Rosamund Lehman dating from the 1960s).
This is everything one could possibly want a modern British period film to be: brilliant, sensitive, perfectly made, enthralling, revealing, informative, stimulating, and inspired.
2002 was a bumper year for Helena Bonham Carter, when she delivered possibly the two finest performances of her distinguished career.
Maybe because she had found personal fulfillment with Tim Burton the year before, it was in 2002 that she made first this film and then 'Till Human Voices Wake Us', in both cases delivering performances which are staggering emotional masterpieces of the acting art.
(And let's hope she does become Dame Helena one day, for that matter, as she already deserves.) Not to be outdone, her sister is played by Olivia Williams.
The man caught in the middle between these two lovelies is Paul Bettany, who is perfectly cast, whose performance is perfectly judged, and is delivered with such pervading melancholy and resignation to the Fates that it elevates this tragic love story to Olympian heights.
The film was so emotional and intense that when I saw this it triggered tears, because one of the most traumatic episodes of my entire life was being with Rosamund the day she died in 1990.
Rosamund's two great character flaws in her otherwise wonderful personality were female vanity and uncontrollable romantic and sexual passion (as shown in the character played by Helena Bonham Carter).
Rosamund was intensely passionate right up to the end, and can literally be said to have been in love on her deathbed, and was straightening her hair and reaching for her lipstick.
I am glad that this film, a perfect testament to Rosamund's amazingly brilliant talent and insights into human emotions, has been rendered on the screen.
The film traces the life of two English sisters who have a man in common.
The one he marries is structured like himself, but then he falls in love, or lust, with the other, a neurotic Bohemian whose child-like passions rob him of reason.There is a fatalistic element to this plot, however.
What is missing from this story is not love, but reason..
This film reminded me of those drawing room dramas that used to play in English theatres in the 1940s and 1950s - like a Noel Coward, with more sex but not a trace of wit.
Williams is starchy, Bonham-Carter is flighty but weary (the usual thing - I think this probably just how she is in the flesh), Bettany is agonisingly caught between the two.
I am not sure what the purpose of this film, The Heart Of Me, a remade The Wings Of The Dove also starring Helena Bonham Carter is but it is pale in comparison however more true to life it could be.
However if you like romantic tragedy or character weakness with listen dialog The Heart of Me is quite possible for you.
Helena Bonham Carter normally a fairly good actress in these period pieces seems absolutely lost and not sure what her character is to accomplish and she comes across that way, unsympathetic where in Wings on course she has the part in her hands.
Olivia Williams new to me acquits herself well but still Paul Bettany seems to be the target or missing portion of The Heart Of Me not sure his character is growing or coming out of hiding.
Despite the valiant efforts of Paul Bettany and Olivia Williams this is fairly forgettable stuff, in territory which has been done before and much better.
Helena Bonham Carter must feel like she's in Groundhog Day. That said, Paul Bettany and Olivia Williams made the best of pretty mediocre base material filled with predictable unimaginative contrivance, to give performances which show each to be capable of moving and powerful acting.
All in all, a worthwhile night out if you like your romantic period pieces, but no more, enlivened by Bettany, who hopefully will go on to do better things, and Williams, who really deserves the chances to move her career up a gear..
Except THIS movie stars the wonderful, the splendorous and the truly MAGNIFICENT, Helena Bonham Carter!
Olivia Williams, who plays her sister in this period piece (1930's and 1940's), is a treat to behold, also.All I can say to conclude is, ONLY the British can pull a film like this off.
In the first place, i checked this one out because of Paul Bettany--encouraged in the venture by a comment that Helena Bonham-Carter goes into new dimensions with her character, Dinah Burkett.
A love story with ugly triangle is not easy territory in which to find people particularly appealing.
Bettany, Bonham-Carter and Williams all cover a heart-wrenching range of human feeling--not just the big stuff (anguish, desire), but the subtleties as well (self-doubt, tenderness, quiet resentment).
The look of the film honorably frames each moment of this powerfully acted story.
Since one cannot "tune out" the way a film looks, the audience wins big-time in this regard.
It was entirely unexpected that Rickie rapes his wife Madeleine, somewhat close to the end of the story.
I love costume drama, I'm a fan of Helena Bonham Carter, but this film was too slow even for me.
Yes, it had its moments of visual beauty, but the story dragged and the characters were unengaging.
Paul Bettany plays - or at least recites the lines of - Rickie, object of desire for two women.
One woman is his wife, Madeleine, played by Olivia Williams.
Helena Bonham Carter plays the arty, bohemian sister, Dinah - easily identifiable as a bohemian type because her clothes don't fit properly, her hair is uncombed and she wears too much dark eye make-up.
I left not long after the affair between Dinah and Rickie was discovered by Madeleine.
But when I couldn't find it in my heart to care what she did about it, I knew it was time to give up on this film.
A beautiful love story..
Set in England during the 1930's The Heart of Me tells the story of two sisters Dinah(Helena Bonham Carter)and Madeleine(Olivia Williams).They both fall in love with the same man Rickie(Paul Bettany).However in terms of marriage only one can really have him.One marries Rickie and the other begins a passionate affair with him.This is a moving and gorgeous film.The costumes are beautiful and the performances are really good especially from the three leads.Helena is one of my favourite actresses and she doesn't disappoint here in her role as Dinah.A well made romance that looks good visually as well.Worth renting or buying on DVD..
Rickie is a man who tells his sister-in-law not to marry (although she was ready to) a man with whom she is not in love.
A painfully beautiful film about love (spoilers).
Beginning in pre-WW2 London the story, based on Rosamund Lehmann's novel 'The Echoing Grove', concerns two sisters - Madeleine (Olivia Williams) and Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter) - who love the same man - Ricky (Paul Bettany).
Ricky is married to Madeleine and they have one son when he and Dinah fall in love and begin a torrid and emotional affair.
Such are the vagaries of fate and circumstance that Ricky is never reunited with Dinah though he loves her until his untimely death.
Many years later the sisters meet for lunch and the events surrounding the affair form their conversation.All the leads are excellent: Williams has the most difficult role as her character is emotionally cold and the least sympathetic.
His love for Dinah aches and proves his unwitting end.A very emotional and beautiful film cut through with tragedy, misunderstandings and missed moments.
It seems that many reviewers blame Paul Bettany's character's weak will and Bonham Carter's character's lack of moral compass for their affair.
For another, Olivia Williams' Madeleine seems to have lost her passion for her husband at least by the time the affair is revealed to the audience.
Did anyone notice the challenge in Bettany's voice when, after the affair is discovered, he kisses Williams and tells her that this is what she has coming back to her revealing the lovelessness (at least physically speaking) that would likely have doomed their marriage regardless of outside influence?Carter does not, for me, possess the kind of fatal beauty that would make her character irresistible to a happily married man and I don't think the film intends for us to feel that way about her.
Williams is much more classically beautiful and if the sister character (Carter) had been supposed to be a femme fatale then the roles of sister and wife would have been better switched.
It was love that brought the husband and sister together not just a submission to passion by two morally weak characters.
She might have decided that, love notwithstanding, the great wrong was not necessarily being with a married man but being unfaithful to her own sister.
Very little exploration of Bettany and Carter's life together and despite the fact that the war plays a big part in Bettany's character's demise there was very little sense of the times for the part of the film that takes place before and during the war.
I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone except hard core fans of the leads (and Eleanor Bron who was so great in "Help)and as a chance to see more of Olivia Williams who deserves better than the clunkers ("Born Romantic","The Postman","To Kill A King") she's appeared in.
Dinah and Madeleine obviously should have been swapped: Olivia Williams is irresistibly sexy even when playing a frigid wife, while the squat, pinch-faced Bonham-Carter has to plaster on the make-up to persuade her 40 years to look more like 30 (and definitely not 20).