Review of The Thirteenth Tale

This moody and mysterious drama based upon a novel by Diane Setterfield (who looks very like Olivia Colman), brilliantly adapted by Christopher Hampton, was shown on December 30, 2013, and was a real success. The direction, acting, cinematography, art direction, and every aspect of the production were splendid. As always happens when Vanessa Redgrave is involved in something, we are all mesmerised by her every look, especially those when she stares into the void and remembers things. In this film, she spends her entire time lying down because she is dying of pancreatic cancer. Despite that, she dominates the action and it is impossible not to fall under her spell. And when did anybody not fall under her spell? The intensity, the dreaminess, the abstract gazes into the beyond (as if she could see something which we cannot see, which is of course always really the case) are all there. And the person who has to counterbalance all this is Olivia Colman, also superb as usual, this time as an introverted and somewhat sulky woman with her own unresolved issues. Redgrave plays a famous popular novelist, and author of a best-selling book called THIRTEEN TALES, which notoriously only contained 12 tales. So everybody has always wanted to know what was the 13th tale which she suppressed and never told. As death approaches, she feels compelled to tell that tale at last, which is the true story of her early life. Redgrave lives in a huge ornate country house full of rare books and beautiful objects. She summons Olivia Colman, a younger and little-known writer, to stay with her and for a very handsome fee to become her biographer. Colman is doubtful and on the verge of being hostile and resentful. She always dresses like someone going camping in the woods and clearly carries the burden of some deep wound. Will she too reveal her own 13th tale? Thus the two women progress with their mutual revelations, all of which are desperately disturbing and infinitely sad. Not for a moment are we bored, as the story unfolds in such a dramatic manner, with many flashbacks. The director James Kent has done a magnificent job of making all of this work. Colman asks Redgrave, suspiciously, why she chose her to write her biography, and Redgrave mysteriously says it is not because of Colman's biography of the Brontes, which she 'would not dream of reading', but because of an article she once wrote about twins. This unsettles Colman, who drops the subject. Colman tells Redgrave that she, Redgrave, has always lied about herself and has told numerous versions of her life, all of which appear to be untrue. Having written under the name of Vilda Winter, a pseudonym, no one has ever known her real name, so Colman demands to be told it. Redgrave says her real name is Adeline March and that she grew up in a large country house 'about five miles from here" on the Yorkshire moors, called Angelfield. She said it burnt down when she was 17. It is what happened between her birth and the age of 17 that is then shockingly revealed, layer upon layer upon layer. It is all so very gripping and strange that we are on the edges of our seats as we watch the tale unfold in all its Gothic complexity. It involves incest, madness, impersonation, and murder. Even in 'telling the truth', Redgrave is not really doing so, because a further layer of the real truth emerges towards the end of the film. But the first version of the truth is that Redgrave was a twin, with an identical twin sister named Emmeline, who died long ago. In the flashbacks, we see the red-haired twins as children, both apparently played by the same child actress, Madeleine Power, who is extremely talented and acts very passionately. They loll around the huge house entirely unsupervised and uneducated, their parents being the brother and sister who live incestuously in the house but rarely come out of their bedroom except to look increasingly demented and exhausted from constant sex (well played by Emily Beecham and Michael Jibson). A mysterious murder takes place in the house, which is blamed on the mother, who is then taken away permanently to an insane asylum. The true murderer is revealed later. Then we move forward in time and the twins are 17. These both appear to be played by the actress Sophie Turner, though the IMDb cast list says she only plays Adeline. I confess myself at a loss to figure out the casting here. Whether Power plays one, two, or three girls (yes, we eventually learn that there are three rather than two), I cannot say, but whatever is the answer, she is extremely good at it and has the correct eerie but beautiful look, especially when she, like Redgrave, gazes into space. Then we discover that Emmeline is really still alive but is also dying, and Colman sees her digging frantically in the earth with her bare hands saying: 'Dead go underground.' Her face is heavily scarred from the fire at the old house. Meanwhile Colman explores the ruined house nearby, half destroyed by the old fire (an amazing true location, wonder where it was), and meets a strange man who sleeps in the ruin sometimes. Later she discovers who he is and why he is there. Things get 'mysteriouser and mysteriouser' as the saying goes. As the real truth comes out about the twins, Colman becomes emotional and bursts into tears and tells her own story, how she feels guilty for having indirectly caused the accidental death of her own twin. Redgrave drolly tells her: 'Feeling guilty doesn't do anybody any good,' but holds her as she sobs. I don't wish to ruin things by telling more of the bizarre tale, but it is surprising, hair-raising and highly melodramatic. This is a really gripping and excellent film.