There are a few clues and Janet's meaningful use of the word "naive" but are we to take it that Ursula was in fact a virginal spinster in an earlier and more moralising age. She certainly seems never to have married?
www.breheny.com
I certainly got the impression she was a virgin and had never really experienced love, if not had only dreamt and imagined about it. I felt really sorry for her.
Fernand Mondego: What happened to your mercy?
Edmond Dantes: I'm a count, not a saint.
I'd have to say yes; it was the 1930s and she was in her 60's so her virginity is probably a foregone conclusion. In one way, Ursula reminded me of Aunt Pitty in Gone With the Wind in that she was a spinster who was shielded from the ways of the world by her family and as a result, just a bit child-like.
What I thought odd, given the ages of the two characters, is that Janet's marriage, as I understood it, was very brief and when she was young during World War I and her husband was killed in action. Inasmuch as Janet and Ursula are in their 60s, perhaps it would have been wiser to move her husband's death back to the Boer War
I thought it was said once in a conversation between the sisters that he had been called back. Like he had been in an earlier war then they needed him in WWI. That made sense to me.
The age thing was the only part of this movie that we had trouble with. Clearly the two sisters were in their mid-late 60's, yes Janet had been a nurse and engaged (not married as she was Miss Widington) during WWI, which was 20 years prior to the year the movie was set in (1936), so unless she was in her 40's when engaged to a man who looked to be in his 30's, there was a time-line problem there.
But clearly Ursula was a virgin, and extremely naive, whereas Janet was a little more world weary. IMHO it was Ursula who had stayed living with the parents in the house in Cornwall, while Janet went to work elsewhere. The fact that they shared a room was simply because they always had, the "spare room" being their parents room.
There was a lot to enjoy about this movie, the sights, sounds and smells of it. I have to say that Charles Dance has hit the ground running in terms of directing!
i thought both the sisters were twins! as for ursula being a virgin, was she really a virgin? i thought she just didn´t have much experience and probably never experienced ´true´love. but is she really a virgin?
shareI would say both sisters were virgins............. the Maggie Smith character never married her dead fiancee, so int hose days it was unlikely that she would gotten laid, for want of a better term!
shareI want to add that women aged 50 in the 1930's is a far cry from women aged 50 in 2006! Besides there were strict societal rules for Ladies of a Certain Age...no hair color, makeup, etc. (No Tarting Up Allowed!)
I'll be 41 soon and I'm looking forward to it...I look a lot younger and I'm in great shape. (exercise, good diet, etc) Women take better care of ourselves now, are encouraged to and great strides have FINALLY been made in women's health. Until the 1980's, women with chest pains in the ER more times than not would be sent home with nerve pills or hormones, are now being taken seriously.
That being said; I found this movie delightful, moving and real. I really love British movies...I am never disappointed. Hollywood wouldn't have touched this film unless they would have been able to turn it into soft-pr0n like just about everything else that comes out of Hollywood unless it is either insipid or gory.
British films are of untouchable quality in every way and I continue to find more and enjoy them all.
In William J. Locke's short story, upon which the screenplay is based, the sisters were in their forties. Maggie Smith and Judi Dench both turned 70 in December of the year of the film's release, 2004. Although they were too old to play the sisters in their forties, the setting and time frame of the short story was kept intact for the film version. A minor thing which I can overlook when the acting is as great theirs! The theme is still the same, a person, mentally, may experience the same trials, tribulations and glow of the feelings of first-love no matter what his/her chronological age.
In the little featurette on the dvd the director said that the storyline was heavily involved with feelings--feelings that the one sister had not felt for a very long time, and which the other had never even felt at all. So I think that makes it pretty clear.
shareThe Virgin
Arms that have never held me; lips of him
Who should have been for me; hair most beloved,
I would have smoothed so gently; steadfast eyes,
Half-closed, yet gazing at me through the dusk;
And hands–you sympathetic human hands,
I would have everlastingly adored,
To which I have so often tendered mine
Across the gulf, O far, far, far away
Alas! My life is dragging from its prime.
My days are bitter with salt tears. Lo, I
Shall pass into the shadow, and the gloom
Will fold me hard about. I shall decay
Slowly like withered flowers. The atmosphere
Will sicken all around me. I shall droop
Towards that tomb, shall stumble, and shall fall.
My body will be covered with rank earth.
Alone and unbeloved for evermore.
Harold Monro (1879-1932)
Wow. Thanks for that poem. I just came back from the film and am still deeply saddened by Ursula's life...
shareI saw the movie Friday night and my heart still feels sad when I think of it. The film was so beautiful, and I loved it, though I do agree with Ty Burr's criticisms. Some background on Andrea and just a bit of action would have helped...
Bottom line: If the storyteller's job is to move the audience and get them to feel genuine empathy for the characters, I would say this was a success.
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She did seem quite inexperienced when it came to the birds and the bees.
'Come and Get It!' - Betty White
While we may know the actresses are now in their 60s, I think it's OK to assume their characters were a bit younger. If Janet (Smith) was ~ 25 & lost the love of her life ~ 1915, that would make her ~ 50, with Ursula (Dench) slightly younger. It wasn't just that the times were more "moralizing," it's that their cohort of eligible young men where literally wiped off the face of the earth. No, it's not at all fair that Ursula never had her chance to find love...
A novel like D. H. Lawrence's THE FOX explains the situation of upper middle class English spinsters of this generation most eloquently. Bottomline: I loved this film!!!
Jan (FILMS FOR TWO)
At first, I assumed Janet was older...but then I second-guessed because she (Janet) seemed a little healthier and agile than Ursual. Plus Ursula had completely gray hair, while Janet still had a mellow blonde color.
Did I miss in the movie where it said Janet was older?
"If Janet (Smith) was ~ 25 & lost the love of her life ~ 1915, that would make her ~ 50, with Ursula (Dench) slightly younger."
This was one of the difficulties with the film, Ursula's infatuation with the boy would have been more poignant and realistic if she was in her late 40s.
An enjoyable Sunday evening film nonetheless.
Actually in the realy story the women or in there 40s but the director thought Judy ench and Maggie Smith would be so perfect that he overlooked the detail. I think it was well worth it, but also poignant the original way.
share[deleted]
Yes, she was. That is almost certain. When she said "What else could I have been except naive?", she was all but saying that she was a virgin.
However, the idea that she had "never been in love", is not necessarily true at all. She may well have, for example, loved a young soldier who died in WW1. Their love may have never been consumated, or he also may not have requited her love. Well, unrequited love does tend to be a pattern.
And despite the "earlier more moralising age", I suspect Ursula would have chosen fto wait for the opportunity or invitation to make love to a man she was in love with. That opportunity may never have been granted her, had she lived in any age. Not because she is ugly or unappealing, on the contrary, because she is "nice". She could never, for example, reject Andrea as Olga does at one point. And it takes such "smart technique", i.e., appearing "not needy" to get someone you love into bed. Ursula did not know that.
If she was a virgin, might the director have asked Dame Judi, "Now, what's your intact hymen's motivation in this scene?"
sharelar-18 said
If she was a virgin, might the director have asked Dame Judi, "Now, what's your intact hymen's motivation in this scene?"
For goodness sakes... why don't we throw in some graphic photos as well to demonstrate the point!
One would hope that had the director asked such a sexually oriented, improper question Dame Judi would have given him the face-slap he would have deserved.
This thread has gone from "gossipy" to plain lewd. The sexual orientation (totally uncalled for by this story) is a demonstration of the shallow and naive, one-eyed and very contemporary idea that having sex "turns a girl into a woman". Hey, "feminists" - where are you?
People seem to be totally missing the spirit of the tasteful subtlety of the movie that portrays the private nature of these people. It is a cloak from outside scrutiny that covers the intimate knowledge and understanding of each others lives shared by these two sisters.
Ursula may have been either a spinster or a widow, although there are indications of the former. There could be any number of scenarios giving rise to her 'current' status and the film leaves you to wonder. Thats part of the magic that marks a skillfully written, directed and acted film. Part of the magic that makes you forget its just a story. Keep the 'magic'.
Of course she was a virgin, a condition not that uncommon 80 to 150 years ago.
She was a virgin of the body but not of the mind, perhaps.
After seeing the movie again on cable last night, i caught a telling conversation where Ursula discusses her sister's husband-she says something like "You were happy with Peter, weren't you? I mean, before he died you..." and then she stopped, never completing the sentence. Her sister (mental block-can't recall her name) then hugs her and Ursula starts crying. Maybe it's from reading this thread but I think Ursula's question was that at least her her sister got to "do the deed" before losing her husband. She had what Ursula never did.
shareI should think her intact hymen's motivation would have been quite clear - to get "un-intact" as quickly as possible! Your comment made me smile.
shareI just watched the DVD. Yes, certainly, Ursula was never married and therefore a virgin. I think Janet may have been engaged 20 years previously, but never married; therefore, also a virgin. This explains their fascination and almost obsession with Andreas. He represented their lost youth and lost opportunity for love.
Both sisters are probably in their fifties in the movie, which is set in 1936. (Have you ever seen Marty - 1955? The Italian sisters in that movie look OLD, yet they are only in their mid-50s.) Women looked older back then. Hey, I'm 52 and I look nowhere near as old as Maggie Smith and Judi Dench in this movie! Times have changed, and people live longer now.
Anyway, I really liked the move, although I thought it ended too abruptly. And they never fully explained why Andreas was found on the beach almost drowned in the beginning of the movie. But, all things considered, I enjoyed the movie because of the always GREAT performances of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.
Yes, I believe her to have been a virgin.
Definatley
Life is like a wheel everything will change