I saw this short drama at the 1998 Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone; they screened a print from the Museum of Modern Art with the original intertitles missing.
IMDb's synopsis is accurate. This is very much a Victorian drama, with morality ditto. I was deeply annoyed by one sequence: when the husband finally makes good and sells one of his paintings, he goes to the conservatory (where he believes his wife is working to support him) to tell her the good news. When he realises that she doesn't work there, and that she lied to him ... get this, now ... he self-righteously resolves to LEAVE her. This despite the fact that she has been supporting him while he dilly-dallied with his paints and palettes. That's another thing I disliked about this movie: the husband allows his wife to support him so he can spend his time painting. Plenty of artistic types have managed to get 'real' jobs while seeking the muse on their time off and at weekends, so why couldn't this artist do likewise?
'The Deception' is thoroughly a product of its era, but even in that era -- when the husband was unquestionably expected to support the wife, rather than the other way round -- it must have been less than fully satisfying. My rating for this: 4 out of 10, mostly for the production design, and for Billy Bitzer's usual superb photography.
IMDb's synopsis is accurate. This is very much a Victorian drama, with morality ditto. I was deeply annoyed by one sequence: when the husband finally makes good and sells one of his paintings, he goes to the conservatory (where he believes his wife is working to support him) to tell her the good news. When he realises that she doesn't work there, and that she lied to him ... get this, now ... he self-righteously resolves to LEAVE her. This despite the fact that she has been supporting him while he dilly-dallied with his paints and palettes. That's another thing I disliked about this movie: the husband allows his wife to support him so he can spend his time painting. Plenty of artistic types have managed to get 'real' jobs while seeking the muse on their time off and at weekends, so why couldn't this artist do likewise?
'The Deception' is thoroughly a product of its era, but even in that era -- when the husband was unquestionably expected to support the wife, rather than the other way round -- it must have been less than fully satisfying. My rating for this: 4 out of 10, mostly for the production design, and for Billy Bitzer's usual superb photography.
