Award winning Author Sarah Walters’ novel about Victorian England, Fingersmith was adapted into a BBC mini-series by Sally Head Productions in 2005. The DVD combines the two parts into a three hour film (I’m not too sure why, as the two parts of the story work well separately). It has a stellar cast including Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance and Imelda Staunton.
Sally Hawkins plays Sue Trinder, a young woman who lives in a Fagin-esque den of petty thieves and homeless criminals. Raised by the seemingly kind Mrs Sucksby (Imelda Staunton) from a baby, she doesn’t think her life has much capability of changing. That is until young man Rivers enters her life with a very tempting proposition; to deceive a young women out of her enormous fortune by befriending her and engineering a marriage between her and himself. This plan doesn’t go well. Definitely not well for her, and in a stunningly staged twist we find out the true nature of her assignment.
This is a good quality period drama, and, with an array of marvellous actors such as these, the acting is faultlessly believable. Sally Hawkins is, and always has been, an actor to cherish.
Fingersmith (2005), directed by Aisling Walsh, is released on DVD by Freemantle Media, Certificate 15.
