Product Review

Isabelle Adjani won the 1981 Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for her performance as the vulnerable but complicated West-Indian Marya, who, after her shady husband Stefan (Anthony Higgins) is imprisoned, finds shelter in the home of a manipulative and lecherous English art patron (Alan Bates) and his painter wife (Maggie Smith). The twisted dynamic that develops between this trio plays out against a stunning recreation of the Golden Age of 1920s Paris and its café culture and extravagant nightlife. In adapting Jean Rhys's 1928 autobiographical novel, Merchant Ivory achieved an artistic breakthrough that remains one of the team's finest works.