Briefly,

the story is about a woman who agrees to bear the child of an English landowner

in exchange for money to pay her father’s debts. When the child is born, the

woman gives up the right to her as agreed. Seven years later, the woman is

hired as a governess to a child on a remote Sussex estate, whose father is the

anonymous landowner…….

What

impresses me most about the film is the part about how the mother is determined

to teach her child to behave so she can be loved by people other than her doting

father. I’m sure there’s something here to be learned by young parents in Hong Kong

or elsewhere.

“It's

a kind of magic. Firelight makes time stand still. When you put out the lamps

and sit in the firelight's glow there aren't any rules any more. You can do

what you want, say what you want, be what you want, and when the lamps are lit

again, time starts again, and everything you said or did is forgotten. More

than forgotten - it never happened.”

A Good Movie for Parents

Comments on this post are for paid subscribers