Vibrant Love Story in ‘Oscar and Lucinda’

Gillian Armstrong’s highly assured “Oscar and Lucinda,” based on the Peter Carey novel Armstrong has long cherished, is such an audacious and unusual tale of love and destiny that you want to be bowled over by it. It has wit and style to burn, and creates an impeccable re-creation of Victorian society undergoing an industrialization that ultimately would have profound impact on the status of women. It has dash, both scope and intimacy and a poignant surprise finish--not to mention considerable complexity and substance.

Yet whether you ultimately will be bowled over by it will depend on how you react to Ralph Fiennes. As in the overrated “The English Patient,” Fiennes here so swiftly projects a quality of such intense apartness and capacity for suffering that he taps a streak of showy martyrdom. For some of us that’s a turnoff, for others it’s yet further proof of what good training performing Shakespeare can be for British actors. In any event, Fiennes gives off a disproportionate aura of exquisite vulnerability.

Armstrong, working from Laura Jones’ adroit adaptation, succinctly introduces us to Fiennes’ Oscar and the beguiling Cate Blanchett’s Lucinda, who meet on a ship bound from London to Sydney in the mid-19th century. Oscar, a would-be missionary, has endured a harsh, rural religious upbringing from his father only to discover a passion for gambling; eventually, he will come to view a belief in God as a bet.

Like Oscar, Lucinda has also had a single-parent rural childhood, but her mother was not only a rebel but rich. Lucinda’s adult life has been a gamble, turning her back on the quiet married country life society would expect of her, to invest successfully in a Sydney glass factory with a rugged minister (Ciaran Hinds), who shares her passion for beautiful glass.

Oscar and Lucinda, clearly mutually attracted, seem made for each other with their risk-taking temperament and imagination, but the one thing that the clenched Oscar can’t do is to declare his love for her in a direct manner, especially in the light of Lucinda’s partnership with the imposing man of the cloth.

The means he ultimately hits upon to express it are so dramatic, involving such obsessive folly, that the film will inevitably bring to mind Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” inspired by a true story in which an Irishman hauled a ship over a mountain in an Amazonian jungle as part of a plan to finance the construction of an opera house in Manaus, Brazil.

Flawless contributions by Armstrong’s crew make “Oscar and Lucinda” a vibrant period piece, buoyant yet incisive, and easily sustaining interest, if not generating deep involvement, throughout a just-under two-hour running time. Blanchett’s naturalness throws Fiennes’ theatricality in bold relief, and Armstrong’s detachment allows for a coolness when her film could use more warmth.

Despite reservations about Fiennes’ off-putting portrayal, “Oscar and Lucinda” is the most venturesome movie yet made by one of the best filmmakers of her time. Any picture made by the director of “My Brilliant Career,” “Starstruck,” “Mrs. Soffel,” “The Last Days of Chez Nous,” “Little Women” and especially “High Tide” is worth a gamble.

* MPAA rating: R, for a scene of sexuality and for brief violence. Times guidelines: The film’s one scene of sexuality is inappropriate for children.

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‘Oscar and Lucinda’

Ralph Fiennes: Oscar Hopkins

Cate Blanchett: Lucinda Leplastier

Ciaran Hinds: Reverend Dennis Hasset

Tom Wilkinson: Hugh Stratton

A Fox Searchlight Pictures presentation in association with the Australian Film Corp. and the New South Wales Film and Television Office of a Dalton Films production. Director Gillian Armstrong. Producers Robin Dalton, Timothy White. Screenplay by Laura Jones; from the novel by Peter Carey. Cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson. Editor Nicholas Beauman. Costumes Janet Patterson. Music Thomas Newman. Production designer Luciana Arrighi. Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes.

* At selected theaters throughout Southern California.