Affinity

Plot synopsis:
Affinity is a beautifully shot costume drama set in Victorian England. Like Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, it has a lesbian romance at the heart of a tale that explores the underside of "proper" society. With a gloomy prison setting and a host of supernatural undertones, the movie carries a darker tone and creepier setting than the previous two works, but is consistent with the mood of the novel it is based on.The film centers on Margaret (Anna Madeley), a wealthy young woman suffering from depression after the death of her father and the rejection of her best friend and former lover who's gone and married her brother. Searching for a new way to get through her days, she signs up to become a "lady visitor" at a bleak women's prison, Millbank.A mysterious girl named Selina (Zoe Tapper) soon catches her eye. Selina claims to be a spirit medium a person who channels spirits and the souls of the dead. She's also serving a long sentence after being convicted for murder, but she claims the murder was the work of one particularly strong and malicious spirit called Peter Quick.At first, Margaret doesn't know what to think about Selina's mystical leanings, but after a few close encounters of her own (including a physical "manifestation" that's impossible to ignore), she begins to believe. After an initial curiosity and attraction, their relationship builds slowly through Margaret's many visits, and her reservations begin to melt away. She becomes obsessed with her mysterious friend, and the pair begins to bristle under the watchful eyes of the prison guards, particularly the head matron, who suspects that the two women are "sweet on" each other.Outside of Millbank, Margaret falls deeper and deeper under Selina's spell and begins to investigate Selina's murky history. Her family and friends tolerate her bizarre new interests to a point, but everyone would prefer that she marry and settle down as soon as possible.Margaret, of course, has other plans involving Selina and the supernatural. In many ways, Margaret is as much a prisoner in her own life, dictated by gender rules and societal expectations, as Selina is in her physical cell.

Tags: romantic

Review:
I am very disappointed that there where a lot of very low ratings for this movie by a good number of people.
Personally I found that the movie was very captivating, and it made me want to understand better what was exactly happening all along.
The costumes where marvelous, and the twist at the end (although I expected something similar, because it almost always happens in these kind of movies) was very good.
It is a very good drama, however only for people that know how to appreciate it.
People who like a lot of action, and not understanding will not appreciate it as much..
I read the novel first, and was so glued to it that i got through it in the matter of a weekend.
when i went to see the film i was not expecting to be as impressed as i was through reading it, but this adaptation is as magical as the novel and did it the justice it deserved.
it is they type of film that can be watched time and time again without losing its appeal.
i would recommend it to anyone, regardless of whether they like period dramas or not, because it is not the average period drama - it is a film that transcends time, and will reach some part of every person.
personally i would go and watch it innumerable times if i could, and cannot wait for the release of the DVD..
I decided to stay up and watch Affinity due to being " a gripping dramatisation" and "full of feints and foreboding" as promised by this weeks RadioTimes Magazine....I can say without hesitation that I was not disappointed.The story was powerful and full of human emotion.
I felt that Zoe Tapper who plays the women's prison inmate/spiritualist Selina Dawes and Anna Madeley as upper-class lady Magaret who together form a bond of strange depths are absolutely fantastic as their characters.
Full of emotion, foreboding and uncertainty until the very end.
Nothing can prepare you for the final twist.I have never read the book unlike the previous reviewer and to be honest I am not sure I am going to now because I would not want it to change the impression I was left with following the film....so powerful I dreamt of it the same night.Watch it or you really are missing out.Richard.
Having just read the book, I was really looking forward to the film adaptation.What a disappointment.
The film felt extremely rushed, with no development of the characters.
I did not for one minute believe the "affinity" between Selena and Margaret and so, consequently, felt nothing about the ending.
More time should have been spent showing the relationship between Margaret and her family members, for instance.
And more emphasis on Selena's previous life and Peter Quick.
And, lastly, more about that awful prison and what the women had to endure.Read the book if you want "the real deal" and to be suspended in excitement, suspense and terrific writing!.
A huge let-down..
Affinity was the television low point of Christmas 2008.
Everything seemed wrong - the men's facial hair, the extras' wooden street-walking, the dreadful music, the sheer repetitiveness (we turned it into a drinking game: one finger for 'walks nervously through prison gates', two fingers for 'walks nervously into cell'; we all got very drunk.) I loathe wobbly-cam shots, trying to watch characters as they bounce around the screen in a haphazard fashion, but occasionally, it can be bearable - Bourne, for instance.
'Affinity' was not the place for wobbly-cams, especially when they are mixed - seemingly at random - with steady shots.
When is affinity real?.
This is another superb film directed by Tim Fywell, based on a novel by Sarah Waters and with a script by the noted Andrew Davies.
The film is dominated by a superb central performance by the young actress Anna Madeley.
It is an eerie tale set in Victorian London, and the directing and art direction are a bit high Gothic intentionally, to heighten the sense of the supernatural.
For me, the high point was a personal one, for it featured one of the last film performances of my old friend Domini Blythe, who died not long afterwards of cancer.
The first time I met Domini, John Hurt and I were in the Flask pub across from his little house in Flask Walk in Hampstead.
Then an amazingly beautiful girl entered the pub, in search of a cold beer for herself.
We got her name out of her, but John was otherwise getting nowhere and so I decided to try a chat line of asking her if she were related to Blythe the stage hypnotist, and said I was fascinated by his technique of being able to exercise mind control by speaking through a loudspeaker attached to a large balloon which he floated above crowds of people outdoors.
When Domini realized I knew of and appreciated her grandfather (her father was Peter Blythe the actor), she instantly made me a blood-brother, and she fastened her magnetic eyes on me and began speaking to me in her low, sultry, mesmerising tones so that I was quickly entranced.
She would make me stand in the middle of a room, preferably with an audience of friends, and she would slither over my shoulder, down my back, under my arms, under my legs, and eventually come to rest on my shoulders, hanging her down down in front of my chest and look up at me with a penetrating hypnotic gaze.
She went on a long Shakespeare tour of Canada and didn't come back, so we were out of touch for many years.
In the last months of her life, as she was desperately ill, my wife and I exchanged loving emails with her, having by chance discovered how to contact her.
Her brother told us how much it meant to her that her old friends had not forgotten her, and it gave her some comfort in her last days.
Another actress in this film who was also near the end of her life and would die of cancer at practically the same time as Domini is Anna Massey.
I did not know her nearly as well as I could have wished, but she was one of the most fascinating women in London.
If you wanted real conversation, then going to her house and talking to her and her scientist husband Uri could not be bettered.
She kept it on inconspicuous display in her sitting room at the front of the house.
She told me to look at it more closely.
Probably it was the only such specimen in London apart from the Natural History Museum's mineral collection.
Anna Madeley, however, remains, now has 41 credits, and was even in A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING (2012, see my review), part of which was shot in my office.
The other young female lead in the film is Zoe Tapper, whose treacherous allure is enough to lead many astray, which is what happens to poor Anna Madeley.
For this film is about spirits, séances, lies, treachery, crime, redemption, and girls liking girls.
And watch out for Peter Quick!
Oh yes, there is the comforting and soothing presence of Anne Reid as Mrs. Brink in the film, who seems prepared to reach out of the screen and wipe any anxious brow..
This film is a must for fans of costume drama, which the British do so well.
I don't want to give away too much of the storyline but basically it centres on the main character (a middle class spinster) and her relationship with one of the prisoners that she visits during her 'project'.
I was glued to it all the way through and you feel 'drawn in' to film.
There was a very good twist of the plot at the end which I certainly didn't see coming!
A definite one for the girls - not sure guys would be so enthusiastic, although (without giving too much away) they may be interested in the developing 'friendship' of the two women!.
Affinity.
No doubt this is definitely not the best movie adopted from Sarah Waters' works, as far as I'm concerned.
I kind of like this dramatic plot but strongly detest the false ending.Similar to Fingersmith, Affinity is a story of skin game.
The swindler commits her scheme successfully through all the lies and deceptions.
But there's no winner in Sarah Waters' stories.
Huge price is paid.
The conspiracy costs too much, purity, clear conscience, and maybe more.The victim of Affinity, Margaret, was at the tragic focus.
Her secret lesbian lover, Helen, betrayed her and it made things even worse that Helen married her brother and made herself Margaret's sister-in-all.
The only consolation left to Margaret was a strand of hair in her necklace lock.
But the movie generously provides scenes to support her claim of innocence.
Margaret devoted her curiosity, compassion, and finally her affection to this so-called affinity, which turns out to be beguilement in disguise.Celina fled away with her real partner Vigers in a ship while Margaret committed suicide by drowning herself in the river.
The ending would be prefect if it just stopped here or at most with Celina's inexplicable tear drops.
The illusionary intimacy in water and Celina unquenchable grief which aroused Vigers' strong reproof "Remember whose girl you are" are really too much.Is the affinity between them real or just a lie?
I would like to make it unknown if I were the film director, because it is unknown.
Who could tell for sure that Margaret killed herself out of nothing else but losing her one love of lifetime?
She was desperate, when she was cheated for the second time, when she was given the last straw and taken away immediately after, when she lost everything she had, her money, her wooer, her hope for a brand new life.
I cannot deny that she had a crush on Celina, but was it true love without any impurity?
And as to the adorable puppet and great performer, Celina, who knows who her real affinity was?
They were far away from affinity, not even close.I haven't read this original novel yet so that I don't know whose idea it is to fake or at least exaggerate their love in the end.
Sarah Waters, probably.
Maybe that's true that she worked out Fingersmith years later to compensate the sadness of this tragedy.
It's a much better work.Most of Sarah Waters' protagonists are lesbians.
But I think she's intended to tell more than homoerotism.
Sarah Waters makes her novels a stage, to reveal their, or to be more accurately, our life, love, desire, solitude, and the darkness in the deepest of our hearts.
Lesbians are the representatives rather than all her subjects.As one of the woman audience, I've seen myself mirrored in her work, more or less.
I even cannot tell for sure whether there's something like that in her creations or in this world.
But one thing is certain that Sarah Waters tells us through her stories: Affinity may not find us some way out.
A shame about the ending....
I checked the IMDb rating of this film before watching it.
But as I subsequently watched it, I found myself more and more surprised at this low rating, because this was well-produced and well-acted and would probably, I thought, get a 7 from me, at the very least.
The plot was intriguing and exciting and understated in an appealing way.
Which is why the nonsensical ending was so disappointing.I haven't read the book, but I understand I have the exact same problem with the film's ending (different from the book's) as do those who've read it.
It's a common theme in stories of the supernatural that it is eventually revealed to be a hoax (Dean R.
Koontz, anyone?), so while it was not surprising, it would have been a great deal more refreshing if it had turned out to be real.
The very core of the plot, the whole concept and the entire point was deception.
Hence the story undermined its own plot by having Selina nurture regrets and have feelings for Margaret after all.
Because Selina and Vigers could only have pulled something like that off if they were really, really committed to these fraudulent schemes, and worked together with complete trust between them.
Therefore Selina's regrets just don't make sense.The story, at the end, in my opinion, should have focused on the relationship and genuine feelings between Selina and Ruth Vigers, which would *actually* have made this into a proper love story after all - except of course for the a bit more than slightly silly fact that they were lesbian rapists (uh - a bit of a stretch in any case) and thus the bad guys.
But I could actually have looked beyond this because of the era in which it took place; an era where lesbians could not openly live out their heartfelt lifestyle, but had to find very alternative and creative ways of doing so.Anyway, the "spirit rapes" being their chief motivation made the whole plot rather dumb, and after that revelation how on earth are we supposed to care for these characters?
A very tragic yet powering story!.
I really enjoyed the movie but it was rather sad y'know.
It would give you great shocks like the pauper Selina Dawes betraying her lover Margaret Prior who is an aristocrat.
Then Margaret committing suicide in the end because of the betrayal and the fact, her family wasn't very supportive with her choices.
I felt like I would give the mother a slap across the face, she was such a horrible vile woman to her daughter!
The brother wasn't even a help either, he just thought he could own everything the family owns!
He was pure selfish too!The movie also makes you angry too for the people that hurt Margaret.
I thought that Selina one was better then that.
She was such a cow, I'll never get over the fact she just took everything belonging to Margaret!Very good story which reflects life during the 1800's, well done BBC!.
Disappointing till the last moment.
I tremendously enjoyed Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith and I was looking forward to another adaptation of Sarah Waters' novels.
Affinity, unfortunately, did not deliver.The storytelling felt a little bit rushed and I constantly had the feeling of missing important plot elements.
At times, I was sorry for not reading the book before watching the movie.I did not quite like the acting of Zoe Tapper and I could not relate to her character.
The final "twist" was not a twist at all for me, as I was telling myself since halfway into the movie that Selina is a scam and is into Margaret just to get herself out of the prison.The character of Margaret Prior almost negated my suspension of disbelief, as I tried to understand her infatuation with Selina, and failed.
The filmmakers did not offer me enough reasons for a love story, enough reasons to care for this woman's feelings.Only watch this if you're a fan of Sarah Waters..
Very slow-moving Victorian/Edwardian style melodrama about a high-strung Jodie Foster type who, after her father dies, begins to pay visits to a women's prison with the intention of helping the inmates.
Instead, she -- on the rebound from an affair with a girlfriend who has recently married her brother -- falls head over heels for a young woman who claims to be clairvoyant but clearly is a charlatan.
The first half of this TV movie plays like a Henry James story, such as TURN OF THE SCREW.
And like any modern thriller, it includes a twist ending.
I suspect the average American will not be able to sit through the whole thing.
Impressionable types of the British persuasion are, I suspect, likely to be its best audience.
By the way, a quick-cut scene at the very beginning betrays the ending, so beware..
A British Historical Film in the Mode of the Lifetime Channel.
Set in the rigid social environment of Victorian England, "Affinity" tells the fascinating story of Miss Margaret Prior, whose repressed life is awakened when plays the role of the altruistic visits a women's penitentiary.
When she fatefully counsels a spiritualist found guilty of crimes of abuse in her seances, Miss Prior finds herself enmeshed with the sensitive young woman named Selina Dawes.The film successfully juxtaposes the physical prison where Miss Dawes is incarcerated with the highbrow prison of Miss Prior's upper-class home, where she is misunderstood and made to feel like a pariah.
The truth about Miss Prior's predicament is slowly revealed when we learn that she had a deep physical and emotional attachment to Helen, who broke off the relationship to marry Miss Prior's brother.
Helen then "buried" her past attachment to Margaret, who still feels the emotional trauma of the loss.The inmate Selina Dawes is perceptive is immediately recognizing Margaret's vulnerability.
She slowly leads Margaret on, claiming that "You are my affinity!" Margaret buys into the outward expression of Selena's expression of love, setting herself up for the big fall.One of the most interesting characters is Margaret's maid named Ruth Vigers.
Miss Vigers breaks up an attempted rape, rescuing Margaret from the clutches of a male suitor.
But Miss Vigers is playing a dangerous game that will not be revealed until the end of the film.There were times when this interesting historical drama loaded with insights into gender lapsed into (intentional?) comedy.
The flashback scenes of the seances conducted by Selena and her associate named Peter Quick were outlandish, especially when Selena began roaring like a lion in a masculine voice.What began as a straightforward British period drama evolved into high camp with the over-the-top lion's roar.
The film blended styles of Downtown Abbey, grand guignol, and Lifetime Channel melodrama in an entertaining costume piece.
In the end, the character who truly steals the show is Miss Vigers.