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‘December Bride’
By Rita Kempley
Washington Post Staff Writer
March 03, 1995
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"December Bride," a somber period piece with a defiant Victorian heroine, is tuned to the same minor key as "The Piano." This slow-moving tale of a seductive servant girl, the two men who covet her and the child that results also sounds many of that film's somber chords.Set in a muddy nook of Northern Ireland, "December Bride" opens with a scenic wide shot of the stalwart Sarah (Saskia Reeves) staring out to sea, an image that recalls the enigma of "The French Lieutenant's Woman." Only this Sarah is not so melodramatically self-indulgent. She's not a headstrong romantic driven by irrational passion for a love that can never be, but a rebel with a cause: economic empowerment. Like "The Piano's" mute heroine, she exploits her sexuality as a means toward self-determination in a man's world. A child of poverty and Presbyterianism, the young Sarah quickly decides to break from each after she and her mother (Brenda Bruce) become housekeepers for an elderly farmer (Geoffrey Golden) and his taciturn sons. Their lives are as rugged as the coastline itself, the changing seasons marked by the labor at hand: harvesting kelp, breeding sheep, digging potatoes. And for a change of pace, the parable-prone pastor's Sunday sermon. When the old man dies in a boating accident, and Sarah's mother returns to her own cottage, Sarah stays behind and takes first the younger son (Ciaran Hinds) and then his brother (Donal McCann) into her bed. A child inevitably results, and Sarah scandalizes the community by refusing to name the father or to marry either brother. At stake for Sarah is the one thing she values above all else: her name, which she gives to her child. The infant also binds both brothers to her, and the arrangement becomes a way of life for the foursome. Though based upon Sam Hanna Bell's novel, the story reveals itself less through dialogue than through the furtive glances and small gestures captured by cinematographer-turned-director Thaddeus O'Sullivan. Unschooled country folk, the characters are stingy with words, but these actors are gifted at expressing their underlying passions with a mumbled lilt or a rough caress. December Bride is not rated.
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