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| Cinecom Pictures | Release Date: March 9, 1990 |
Starring:
Aidan Quinn, Blanche Baker, Elizabeth McGovern, Faye Dunaway, Kathryn Doby, Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall, Traci Lind, Victoria Tennant, Zoey Wilson
Summary:
In a dystopian, polluted right wing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.
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Taut, powerful, brilliantly lit, The Handmaid's Tale casts a spell, even as it spells out its dire warning. [09 Mar 1990, p.20]
Despite its shortcomings, however, the movie is often stimulating in a way that movies generally aren't. A dark, mirthless satire set in the near future, the film keeps your attention by holding a warped mirror up to our own time. [19 Mar 1990, p.C1]
Dutifully bleak, suitably oppressive, the film delivers Atwood's desolate who-owns-our-bodies? indictment with intelligence and probity. [09 Mar 1990, p.25p]
It's a beautifully austere piece of work -- it's rare to see a film these days that's as carefully designed as this one. But the design hasn't been given enough human contours. It's as if the film makers had forgotten the raging emotions that all that design and austerity were supposed to repress. [07 Mar 1990, p.F1]
The finale isn't quite as chillingly nerve-wracking as one would hope. Schloendorff, who also made The Tin Drum, directs with a uniform dullness that creates little sense of suspense. In replaying the Atwood novel, he and Pinter ultimately fail to create a significant timbre of their own to make the transmogrification truly effective.
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The film is madly, compulsively overcontrolled, from its funereal pacing to its pristine red, white and blue color scheme; those moments when it loses its dignity are irresistibly comic, and in this grim context, infinitely precious.[16 Mar 1990, p.B]
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