It’s been over a century since anyone’s adapted Wilkie Collins’ underrated “The New Magdalen” for the screen, and while Aurélia Georges’ cleverly modified version doesn’t resolve the novel’s inability to account for the protagonist’s mastery at disguising her working-class origins, its handsome imagery and Sabine Azéma’s adroit interpretation as the duped wealthy widow make “Secret Name” an attractive prospect for costume drama fans. The novel played on Victorian-era anxieties of class corruption with its story of a former prostitute assuming a dead high-bred woman’s identity only to discover that she wasn’t dead after all, but since subverting the social order no longer carries the same level of apprehension it did back then, the film foregrounds the ethical ramifications of impersonation and identity.
Georges (“The Girl and the River”) and her co-writer Maud Ameline seamlessly shift Collins’ action from the Franco-Prussian War to the First World War,...
Georges (“The Girl and the River”) and her co-writer Maud Ameline seamlessly shift Collins’ action from the Franco-Prussian War to the First World War,...
- 8/16/2021
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
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