Solomon & Gaenor

Although writer/director Paul Morrisson wrote the original screenplay for his debut feature Solomon & Gaenor, the film feels like a literary adaptation, one of the brooding Bronte or Hardy variety. It’s the timeless tale of two star-crossed lovers ñ here, a Welsh coalminer’s daughter and the Russian-Jewish son of a pawn shop owner in turn-of-the-century Wales. Their love story is an ancient one: Two youths meet and the collective heart leaps, neither knowing yet how completely the world, the church, their parents are out to get them. They fall in love in record time (three, maybe four inconsequential conversations, then it’s time to hit the barn for that other ancient practice ñ rolling in the hay.) Every turn spells tragedy: Solomon lies about being an Orthodox Jew (he introduces himself as Sam), Gaenor gets pregnant and is thrown out of the church. Solomon’s family sends him away to Cardiff, Gaenor’s family banishes her to the mountains. This is mournful, melodramatic stuff, the kind of story Masterpiece Theatre eats up (and spits out), accompanied by a sweeping score and lushly shot vistas of a bleak countryside. And perhaps Masterpiece Theatre might have been the better forum for this piece. Despite its epic themes, Solomon & Gaenor feels very small-screen. There’s nothing terribly wrong with it (in fact, it was nominated last year for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film), but it’s impossible to shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right. The score sweeps along, just like it should, but it inspires an emotional despair that the film itself hasn’t ably demonstrated. The bleak countryside is indeed lushly shot, but it still feels flat. The actors handle their material assuredly, and Gruffudd and Roberts (as the lovers) have moments in which their joy and their pain are palpably felt. But they never hit those moments together. Gruffudd owns the first half of the film, with his sweetly scruffy charm, while Roberts has all the presence of a limp dishrag. When everything starts to fall apart, Gruffudd mostly fades away, his actions and emotions becoming more and more inaccessible, but Roberts gains a radiant, maternal strength. One’s always hot while the other’s always cold, which makes for more a tepid, ill-fitting match then anything terribly star-crossed. We simply never get Solomon and Gaenor’s love. The landscape and the lovers are pretty to look at, but two households divided should really pack more of a punch.