The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)

A film company is shooting a movie set in Victorian England about a paleontologist (Jeremy Irons) who is engaged to marry  a young woman (Lynsey Baxter) but who becomes obsessed with a woman (Meryl Streep) with a mysterious past. The two actors (also Streep and Irons) playing the lead roles, while married to others, are also having an affair. Based on the celebrated John Fowles novel and adapted by Harold Pinter, Fowles novel is one of those books that defies a faithful transition to the screen. In Fowles' novel, the narrator is a character and there is no equivalent in the film. The novel has three different endings and the film creates the "making a movie" scenario which is not in the book to parallel one of the endings. With all that in mind, the film does a good job of approximating the intent of the novel. The Victorian portion works better than the modern portion because we can accept the reserved passion due to the societal constraints of the time but the contemporary "romance" is passionless. Part of the problem might be due to the casting of the dried out Irons, perhaps one of the least passionate actors out there but Streep is excellent if perhaps too meticulous.  Karel Reisz's direction is exemplary. With Leo McKern, David Warner, Patience Collier, Hilton McRae and Peter Vaughan.