Review: Solomon & Gaenor

Directed by Paul Morrison

"Gaenor Rees is with child--she has been fornicating with a stranger," says a spiteful church official, publicly denouncing a young Sunday school teacher in a Welsh coal-mining town in 1911. The man is spiteful, but not untruthful. For Gaenor, the daughter of a bigoted coal-miner, has been caught up in a forbidden relationship with Solomon, the son of a Jewish pawnbroker. In his extraordinary directorial debut, screenwriter Paul Morrison--a sensitive storyteller with a gift for bold imagery--conveys the luminous joy of first love as unerringly as he does the devastation of emotional betrayal and the poisonous impact of religious prejudice. Best of all, he had true beginner's luck when he found the stunningly attractive and talented Nia Roberts and loan Gruffudd to play his tragic but triumphant lovers.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group