A Doomed Love Compels in ‘The Girl in a Swing’

Some films--”Wuthering Heights,” “Out of Africa” and more--must be entered into utterly or not at all, and “The Girl in a Swing” (selected theaters) is certainly one of that number. With two impassioned performances and a soaring musical score that heightens its mood of doomed romanticism, “The Girl in a Swing” is an uncommon spellbinder. It’s also an all-or-nothing movie experience.

Like the original novel by “Watership Down’s” Richard Adams, “The Girl in a Swing” is a contemporary love story that darkens and deepens as it unfolds. In its opening, Alan Desland, a bright, repressed Englishman in his early 30s, becomes aware of life’s erotic possibilities for the very first time. Meeting a beautiful, bold, enigmatic young German girl working in Copenhagen, he falls in love--as wildly and completely as she does. They marry in a matter of weeks and begin a closely shared life in England’s Berkshire, idyllic until Karin begins to have mounting visions of menace and dread, portents he starts to share.

It’s not a story that condenses without sounding predictable or absurd, and it’s neither. Nothing about “The Girl in a Swing” is predictable, especially its supernatural elements. Novelist Adams’ power comes from his sure mixing of the commonplace, the sensual and the magical in a seemingly ordinary world. His hints about the consequences of repression have more in common with “The Turn of the Screw” than with films teeming with ectoplasmic manifestation. Gordon Hessler, a veteran director and the film’s adapter, is strongest in his casting and his rapport with actors; in other areas he’s sometimes overcautious and pedantic. There’s nothing cautious about his two stars’ performances, however. You may remember Rupert Frazer from “The Shooting Party” or as the long-separated father in “Empire of the Sun.” His Alan Desland manages to suggest reserve without priggishness and the deepening pleasure of a man in the grips of full-tilt infatuation.

As Karin, the German-born enchantress, accent and all, the sloe-eyed Meg Tilly is something of a revelation, even after the surprises of her performance in “Masquerade.” Physically, Tilly may look more like Denmark’s Little Mermaid than the goddess-like woman of the book with her aura of almost primal sensuality, but Tilly’s direct, provocative gaze is enticing in another way and her conviction is absolute.

There’s a nice, confident level of civility to the production too: matters of art direction and production design like Desland’s upper-echelon country house, his antiques and porcelain shop and the crucial detailing of the porcelain figure of the title. Only the costume design feels timid, off-the-rack or, at worst, designed with no discernible flair. (You might question the strange, overheavy cuts to the pianist at the recital the lovers go to, but who knows what promises are made in exchange for an appearance in a film.)

Finally, there is the film’s sumptuous Carl Davis music. An American who has lived in England for years, Davis has written music for “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” “The Rainbow” and “Scandal,” as well as the bittersweet themes for Thames television’s “The Unknown Chaplin” and its series on Buster Keaton. All of it is lovely stuff, yet this score seems his finest yet. His work unifies the film, carries it as powerfully as Bernard Herrmann’s scores carried Alfred Hitchcock’s or Brian DePalma’s thrillers.

The care and taste of the production can be laid at the door of Just Betzer, who also produced “Babette’s Feast.” The book’s fans will be relieved to know that Betzer and company have steered away from every lurking pitfall in matters of taste and judgment. Since Adams’ story is about the deep-reaching power of unfettered, almost pagan love, with a heroine who drops her clothing as naturally as other women drop their inhibitions, those pitfalls may have been considerable. (The film is Times-rated Mature for its love scenes, frank language and occasional, decorous nudity.)

Yet if the film has a flaw, it may be this very civility. Its restraint is admirable, but in dealing with so much modulation it necessarily loses ferocity. Possibly, this is a story whose telling needs to rip out all the stops--something this production isn’t prepared to do. It may be that film itself can’t do what’s needed here, that these are visions and demons better left to the printed page and the unbounded imagination. Maybe there’s really no technique that could take this story to new levels of expressiveness. It’s just that “The Girl in the Swing” is good enough that it makes you wish it could.