USA: RALPH FIENNES CO-STARS WITH CATE BLANCHETT IN AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR GILLIAN ARMSTRONG'S ADAPTATION OF "OSCAR AND LUCINDA"

Record ID: 387387

  • Title: USA: RALPH FIENNES CO-STARS WITH CATE BLANCHETT IN AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR GILLIAN ARMSTRONG'S ADAPTATION OF "OSCAR AND LUCINDA"
  • Date: 11th December 1997
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) (SOUNDBITE ENGLISH) RALPH FIENNES SAYING, "WELL, I THINK THE GREAT CLASSICS, THE GREAT NOVELS, THEY ARE RECOGNIZABLY HUMAN CREATIONS. IN THIS CASE OSCAR AND LUCINDA ARE ECCENTRIC OR IDIOSYNCRATIC CHARACTERS SO THEY ARE MEANT TO STICK OUT AND BE SLIGHTLY ODD BUT NOT UNHUMAN. BUT THEN I NEVER FOUND THAT A PROBLEM. I MEAN I THINK BECAUSE I AM HUMAN, I GUESS, I HOPE." (SOUNDBITE ENGLISH) GILLIAN ARMSTRONG SAYING, "THAT WAS A VERY DIFFICULT THING TO FIND, EITHER THE OTHER ACTORS HAD THE STRENGTH OR THE ROMANTIC POWER OR ELSE THEY WERE THE NERDS AND RALPH, BECAUSE HE'S SUCH AN INCREDIBLE ACTOR, COULD CARRY BOTH AND I THINK ALSO CARRY THAT SPIRIT OF A REALLY GENUINE GOOD PERSON WITHOUT SEEMING LIKE A FOOL."
  • Embargoed: 26th December 1997 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES AND VARIOUS FILM lOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA5YGMU3A9FMMAE42VHS9M4COSV
  • Story Text: - Australian director Gillian Armstrong's latest offering "Oscar and Lucinda" has premiered in the United States.

    The film was the third most popular limited release movie playing in New York and Los Angeles during its first outing over the weekend.

    Faithfully adapted from Peter Carey's 1988 Booker Prize-winning novel, "Oscar and Lucinda" stars Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett.

    The actors play two eccentric dreamers and gamblers enmeshed in a Victorian-era romance.

    Oscar is a deeply religious man with an obsessive talent for gambling. Lucinda is a wealthy heiress with a particular fondness for poker games.

    Set in England and several regions of the Australian continent, "Oscar and Lucinda" is told in one long flashback from the point of view of Oscar's great grandson, who recounts the events leading to his birth.

    The first part of the film depicts Oscar and Lucinda's respective childhoods. It cuts between Oscar's lonely boyhood in rural England, where he's raised by a severe precher father and Lucinda's education on an Australian farm, tutored by a strong, intelligent mother who was actively involved in the early feminist movement.

    The film continues when the mature Oscar goes to Oxford to train as a minister, where he realizes once again he doesn't fit in. Lonely and repressed, he meets a fellow named Wardley-Fish (played by Barnaby Kay) who introduces him to horse-betting, with which he is instantly taken.

    Oscar's fateful meeting with Lucinda takes place on board a ship, when he decides to become a missionary in the Australian outback. Lucinda is returning from London after acquiring the latest machinery for her glass factory.

    A bond develops between them, one that's based on trust and is intimately romantic.

    As their unusual relationship centres on games of chancer, bets and wagering, it inevitably leads to gossip, scandal and controversy.

    Lucinda's friendship with the Reverend Dennis Hasset (Ciaran Hinds), a man who shares her interest in glass, results in his exile to a remote community in New South Wales.

    Convinced that Lucinda is in love with Hasset, Oscar determines to build a glass church -- a metaphor for their scintillating yet tenuous love -- and transport it to the Reverend.

    Gillian Armstrong directed Laura Jones' adaptation of the novel. While Armstrong's recent work includes the studio films "How to Make an American Quilt," and "Little Women," she is best known for her work in her native land; "My Brilliant Career," "High Tide," and "The Last Days of Chez Nous". Those films, like "Oscar and Lucinda," all feature young, independent women who go against the traditional social grain to fulfill their creative and personal dreams.

    Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush provides the voice for the narrator who is heard throughout the film, recounting his great-grandfather's life.

    Tom Wilkinson, seen most recently as "The Full Monty's" middle-class stripper, plays Hugh Stratton, the young Oscar's religious yet understanding mentor.

    "Oscar and Lucinda" was shot entirely on location in England and Australia.

    It opens in Britain in March.
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