Synopsis
In 1857, at the height of his fame and fortune, novelist and social critic Charles Dickens meets and falls in love with teenage stage actress Nelly Ternan. As she becomes the focus of his heart and mind, as well as his muse, painful secrecy is the price both must pay.
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Cast
- Ralph FiennesCharles Dickens
- Felicity JonesNelly Ternan
- Joanna ScanlanCatherine Dickens
- Kristin Scott ThomasCatherine Ternan
- Tom HollanderWilkie Collins
- Michelle FairleyCaroline Graves
- John KavanaghReverend Benham
- Amanda HaleFanny Ternan
- Perdita WeeksMaria Ternan
- Tom BurkeGeorge Wharton
Recommendations
- 100
The Hollywood Reporter
A career high point for Ralph Fiennes as both an actor and director, this unfussy and emotionally penetrating work also provides lead actress Felicity Jones with the prime role in which she abundantly fulfills the promise suggested in some of her earlier small films. - 100
Variety
So tastefully mounted and brilliantly acted that it wears down even the corset-phobic’s innate resistance to such things. - 80
The Guardian
The Invisible Woman shies from propaganda just as Nelly shies from impropriety. Fiennes has done the right and proper thing here. He has, at 50, made a mature movie, prudent in the best possible sense. - 80
The Telegraph
Abi Morgan's script – better, for my money, than her work on either Shameor The Iron Lady – elegantly straddles two timelines to illuminate a deliberately obscured life - 80
Time Out
The movie deepens as Nelly, destined for the gossip columns and a peripheral attachment, becomes painfully aware of her own fragility (Jones’s performance is devastating). - 78
Film.com
Fiennes and writer Abi Morgan mercifully forsake the gee-golly traditions of similar fame-minded fare...in constructing a narrative as emotionally repressed as its subjects must have been, with each character existing within their own arena of personal and social compromise. - 75
IndieWire
Though suffering from dry patches and a fairly mannered approach, The Invisible Woman eventually makes its way to a powerful final third documenting an ultimately tragic romance in deeply felt terms. - 75
Observer
Mr. Fiennes admirably humanizes the characters while exploring their contradictions and emphasizing their feelings. But his no-frills direction is a bit stodgy for my taste, and although this is not the Dickens you’d ever pay to hear read "Little Dorrit," there’s more vitality in his performance than the film itself.
