Affinity

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I don't know much about British author Sarah Waters, but from what I gather she has written four mystery romances and co-authored a fifth, most of them set in Victorian times and centering on lesbian themes. Television has already turned two of them into well-received productions--"Tipping the Velvet" (2002) and "Fingersmith" (2005)--and now Box TV, Cité Amerique, Castel Film, Movie Central, and the Logo Network (from MTV Networks and Paramount Home Entertainment) offer up a third, "Affinity" (2008), making its DVD debut after showings at a series of gay and lesbian film festivals.

"Affinity" is at once a gothic mystery, a romance, and a quasi-supernatural tale, with plenty of moody atmospherics to go with it. However, for avid fans of mysteries, romances, or stories of the supernatural, the movie may seem quite measured, perhaps even sluggish, because while it is all three of the above, it doesn't really settle down into any one of them long enough to feel satisfying. I suspect that Ms. Waters' novel was too intricate to condense satisfactorily into a ninety-minute teleplay, so rather than the movie providing a gratifying whole, we get bits and pieces of brilliance that don't quite hang together very well. It's not a bad movie, just a slow, gloomy, oddly disjointed one.

The film's setting is London in the 1870s. It was an era known for its sexual repression and its heightened interest in spiritualism (mediums, seances, spirits of the dead, that sort of thing). Ms. Waters weaves these elements together in the story, yet she doesn't quite make either of them very provocative. This is a fairly tepid production, after all, so there is little that is titillating or frightening about it. In the long run, it's a rather old-fashioned melodrama, which I do not mean as an indictment, just an observation.

The main character is Margaret Pryor (Ana Madeley), a wealthy, single young lady in her late twenties or early thirties, an age when Victorian society expected most respectable women be married and starting a family. Not only is Margaret unwed and still living with her mother, but her father has just died; plus, she has a piggish suitor, Theophilus Finch (Vincent Leclerc), making unseemly advances upon her; and, worse still, her former lover, Helen (Ferelith Young), has just married her brother! Margaret is not a happy person.

In an attempt to assuage her troubles, Margaret decides to visit the local prison for women, Milbank, on a regular basis to listen to and counsel the inmates there, to help "mould their character," as one person suggests. It seems an odd thing to do, visit a prison to get over your depression. Why would she do this? To occupy her time? To take her mind off her own troubles? To soothe her own soul? Or to find comfort in those who are more wretched than herself? The movie raises more questions than it answers, which is a good thing in many ways while frustrating in others.

While visiting Milbank, Margaret strikes up a friendship with one of the prisoners, a young woman named Selina Dawes (Zoe Tapper), whom the court convicted for being a fraudulent medium and indirectly causing the death of a participant at one of her seances. Selina claimed the spirits caused the person's death, not her, but the court wasn't buying it. In any case, Margaret and Selina almost immediately bond, find an affinity with one another. But what is the basis for their mutual attachment? Is it simply a physical attraction between two women who fall in love at first sight? Is it because Margaret sees in the medium a means to contact her dead father? Or is Selina exploiting the deep sorrow she sees in Margaret in order to win her confidence and possibly help her get released?

Then, mysterious things start to happen: a vase of flowers shows up out of nowhere in Margaret's bedroom; one of Margaret's valued lockets goes missing; a plait of Selina's hair appears under Margaret's pillow. Perhaps Selina does have paranormal powers.

Certainly, Margaret sees in Selina a woman as unfairly imprisoned as herself, the one behind bars and walls, the other behind the hypocritical veneer of a suppressive society and a controlling, manipulative family. And that's about as far as the story goes until the not-so-surprising surprise ending.

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