Dreaming of Joseph Lees (1999) User Reviews

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Bed--Possible Spoiler

[katherinewithak · 7/10 · 4 August 2005]

I thought this was an exceptionally well-directed, superbly-acted movie with a winding (albeit erotic!) plot . . . but a terrible, "didn't see it coming" end. The end was abrupt and totally out of place. At the very least, the "cuckoo" suggested in the title should've died off and the story should've then ended with Eva and her lover boy staring off into the sunset together

Without yielding spoilers, I will also say pish posh to all the hogwash about how it should have been an easy choice for her to abandon her "dreamer" boy and stay with the "one that loved her." The one that loved her did not love her, folks--he was a sick, depraved, mentally-ill soul who could not love properly, treat her properly, nor ever perceive her properly. He could not even relate properly to the real world let alone truly "love" Eva. He was a twisted, childish narcissist incapable of rendering her a suitable existence--unlike his dashing and mentally-sound rival. I wouldn't have even done for Harry what she did after the crazed stunt he pulled toward the movie's end--I would have left him to the State and not allowed him to manipulate me through his own self-destructive threats or actions like he did Eva. And then I would have happily sailed off with Joseph without batting an eye. Somehow in the movie she was made to bear the guilt and responsibility of every errant thought, motive, or action of Harry, and I don't think that was fair or deserving.

Despite the "too many unanswered questions" ending, the movie--though a bit predictable--draws one in and holds him to the end with an eerie blend of nostalgia, sweet sentamentalism, erotic interest, and blimey--that strange, unusual, and tentacular "twist" so prevalent in English films (where they almost twist away from the norm or conventional a bit . . . but then, is that just the English?)

The film is definitely worth its time.

This movie was aggravating

[kimmishy5 · 7/10 · 20 October 2019]

I liked the acting and I liked the movie but it was aggravating... We are all responsible for our own Happiness... No one can live for someone else!

4.9 average??????? Not by my judgment!!!

[Gandalf-64 · 6/10 · 3 December 1999]

When I go to the movie (having an 8 weeks unlimited movies pass) I usually have to plan. I can't be out too late, because I have to get home by bus. But I still would want to watch two movies, if possible. Yesterday the possibility was there in taking "Dreaming of Joseph Lees" as a second movie. I had to run from one screen to the other to be in time, but I managed. entering the screen that played "Dreaming of Joseph Lees", I had the whole cinema to myself. Then having watched the movie I wondered why that was and why the average is only 4.9 for this movie. I am almost giving double figures for this movie.

Some reasons maybe: - It is about very common people. - It is not sensational at all. No real violence, no real sex, etc. - Too much complex psychology. - It is too British. - The story is too simple.

The story is about a woman who by her own acting runs into the dilemma of the feeling of responsibility for Harry (with whom she lives together for a while), a psychopathically jealous partner, even jealous of a book that Eva is reading, and her love from childhood Joseph Lees, who in an explosion loses a leg. Samantha Morton (never heard of her before) plays Eva brilliantly and Lee Ross does a very good job on the complex character of Harry, the farmer. Then there is Janie, sister of Eva and only wanting her sister to be happy. And Eva doesn't really see until the end, but she is happiest with Joseph Lees, who enters her life again at a wedding.

The end of the movie: Get your handkerchiefs out for a brilliant climax....

My feelings went from "I don't know what kind of a movie this is going to be, probably not a very good one" (4.9 average) to "What a beautiful movie". It is a shame that so few people seem to appreciate this movie....And the cinema streamed empty...I was going home.

A beautiful, evocative film. Morton shines.

[lstein-2 · 29 November 2000]

Another transcendent performance from Samantha Morton (she was also the female lead in Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown").

This is a truly lovely film, "small" in the sense that only a few characters and their lives are affected by the love triangle, but "large" in the sense that it will strike a familiar chord for many viewers. Morton's face seems to show every thought or feeling that passes through her.

Eva (Morton) experiences both ends of an obsessive love relationship. She has been dreaming of her glamorous-seeming second cousin Joseph Lees (Rupert Graves in a fine performance) since a girlhood visit. A neighboring young pig farmer (Lee Ross)adores Eva; his attentions are charming but uninvited.

I had truly never heard of this film when it came on TV late one night - and was delighted that I stayed up late to see it through to the end. I recommend you seek it out to do the same.

Beautiful cinematography in a quiet film, written and directed with a restrained, well-modulated hand.

Love the one you're with, or seek bliss?

[alanjj · 7/10 · 3 January 2004]

What is the right thing to do? Follow your fantasy mate while destroying one who loves you, or staying behind and sacrificing yourself so that the one who loves you will stay alive?

Many people have had to make such a choice: the person of your dreams appears, and there is a real possibility that you can establish a relationship with that person. However, you've established a relationship with another, an uneven relationship, where he loves you more than you love him. But he is a good person, and devoted. Handsome, a good lover. But the person of your dreams (in this case, Joseph Lees) is also real, and could take you to a place where your life can be miraculous and sublime. What to do?

I enjoyed this film tremendously, and easily related to the characters and situations.

A excellent film if you can buy into it and overcome the tedium.

[=G= · 6/10 · 16 April 2001]

"Dreaming of Jospeh Lees", a good, earnest and artful shoot, tells of the coming of age of a rural English girl and her conflict over a tentative romance with a close friend while yearning for a less available kissin' cousin for whom she's carried a torch since childhood. Over all a good film, this story lacks substance, spends its time poorly, toys with the audience in a fraudulent attempt to whet interest in the absence of a solid story, and is too far out of the mainstream to be popular. Nonetheless, for those patient few who can buy into the characters, "Dreaming..." will be a very satisfying watch.

Maudlin weepie

[sass_brown · 2/10 · 21 August 2000]

I'll be glad to speak to the reasons why "Dreaming of Joseph Lees" only scored an average of 4...it's maddeningly vague (those with a taste for pretentious "art cinema" may mistake this for lyricism), melodramatic, murky (both in terms of plot and lighting), and contains a wholly unsympathetic cast of characters. Who is worse: the man-child who throws tantrums and even mutilates himself to keep his woman, or the woman who stays with him? This film has all the markers of a tragedy (the accident; the woman caught between duty and love; the close-ups of Morton's prettily-anguished face) except the most important one -- it fails to make us care.

Moving - And Exasperating

[HarlowMGM · 8/10 · 27 February 2006]

DREAMING OF Joseph LEES is one of the most romantic pictures of recent years but it is seriously marred by a pretentious streak, improbable character actions, and a artsy ambiguous ending that is a cheat. Samantha Morton gives an excellent performance but Eva is such an incredibly plain heroine that it's odd why two quite handsome (one of them, Rupert, extraordinarily handsome) men would be obsessed with this little church mouse.

Set in 1958 rural England, Eva has long mooned over a distant cousin, Joseph Lees, who unlike the rest of her relatives has gone off to see the world and is interested in "books and things". Eva is pursued by a local pig farmer Harry who longs to be a prizefighter and longs to bed Eva. Having not hear anything about Joseph in years, Eva decides to slide into a relationship with the persistent Harry, only to have Joseph suddenly reappear and for the dark side of Harry's obsession to be revealed.

I found the screenwriter's sympathy with Harry downright offensive given his truly dangerous personality. When Eva, upset with his barking dogs, tells him to "get rid of them", he does - he shoots them!! Later he goes and self-mutilates himself ( thinking perhaps Eva's emotional tie to Joseph was sympathy based?) - this is some scary sh*t and yet the screenwriter treats it all like, poor thing he really loves her and its tearing him apart. I realize this is set in the late 1950's (though you would never know it from some of the clothes and hairstyles) but even then women had more options that just feeling obligated for life to the person who deflowered them. That everybody was so sympathetic to Harry for all the emotional BS he put Eva through was just bizarre to me. The ending leaves it up in the air what will be Eva's final decision - Harry or Joseph - it's an artsy twist that the producers should have demanded be rewritten. There is a slight hint she will go with Joseph (her sister's smile) but it's certainly not clear what her final decision will be. Had the producers brought in someone to rewrite the script they may have had themselves a major hit instead of what it is, a obscure little film not seen by many and one of the very few from recent years that has never been released on DVD.

The performances are excellent though - the young actress playing the little sister is really good and the ever dashing Rupert Graves proves once again he is one of the best actors in films today. But let's face it - if a woman has to choose between Rupert Graves or somebody else, unless that woman is mentally unbalanced herself, "somebody else" hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell.

The epitome of all that is rotten about the British film industry

[grahamdavidhughes · 1/10 · 27 April 2001]

Plotless, pointless, tediously dull and lifeless. This film is a serious contender for the worst film that Britain has ever made. It is therefore no surprise to see Samantha Morton, the actress in the equally dreadful Brit-flick Under the Skin (1997), takes the leading role.

Whereas dreadful Hollywood fodder like Showgirls, Battlefield Earth and Wild Wild West have some (although not many) redeeming features, Joseph Lees has none. It's not even fun to watch as a bad film. It starts off awful and then declines from there. It's the celluloid equivalent of Japanese water torture.

Why is it so bad? Well, it is the sum of its parts. The direction is pedestrian, the acting is rotten, the script is dull, the story is predictable, the setting is miserable and all the characters do is mope around for two hours looking depressed. However, it is the sheer pointlessness of it all that deals the crushing blow. There is nobody to root for, nobody you can equate to, nobody to really care about. There is no humour, no emotion, no life, no empathy and nothing to make you want to watch it to the end.

Imagine sitting for in an empty bar being spoken at by somebody incredibly boring and utterly unlikeable about something you do not care about. They talk in a dull, monotone voice, and after two painfully slow hours, they get up mid-sentence and leave without saying goodbye, even though you had the decency to sit there a waste a couple of hours of your life listening to their inane little tale.

It would be more enjoyable to sit through all eight hours of Andy Warhol's lesson in pointless film-making, Empire, without a toilet break. Why the producers saw fit to spend the limited resources of the British film industry to make a godawful film that nobody would want to see boggles the mind. The only use for this film would be to show film students in a 'How Not To Make Movies' class. Avoid at all costs.

Unforgettable

[joyincmajor · 10/10 · 7 July 2001]

Out of curiosity, I picked up this movie at a video store, and was very pleasantly surprised. Samantha Morton is exquisite and believeable as Eva, a quiet girl who harbors a deep love for Joseph Lees, a geologist and distant relative.

I had never heard of Rupert Graves before but he too was tremendous as a lonely man with a personal sorrow.

The supporting cast was top-notch. This is a movie that I have seen several times and will certainly rent it again in the future. It is unforgettable.

underrated...

[zooey · 8/10 · 31 July 2000]

Sepia-toned, understated, Hardyesque - Dreaming of Joseph Lees is one of those rare, quiet films that hits with brute force. Its only serious fault is in a too-slim characterization of Harry - his desperation could and should have been a little more fleshed out. We're only given glimpses into the reasons behind his crippling dependency on Eva. Apparently lots of folks feel that Joseph Lees suffers from a similar near-transparency, but his character is what it must be - he has always been a romanticized ideal for Eva. And his fleshing out in her eyes, is present, but also patient, as it must be.

Near the end of the film, Morton turns in some of the best acting I've seen in years in a scene in which her Eva finds herself just inside the front door, literally caught between Harry (further inside the house) and Joseph (just outside the door). Rarely has heartbreak ever been so beautifully rendered in a performance as it is here.

It's a crying shame that this film has yet to find its audience.

Insanely Beautiful Movie

[gzerna · 10/10 · 11 December 2003]

Luminous acting, plus painterly cinematography, plus expert musical scoring, equals heavenly cinema.

Woody Allen cast Samantha Morton as the mute co-star to Sean Penn in `Sweet and Low Down' (remember the girl who never said a word, but spoke volumes?). After seeing her in this film, I don't think she even needed to audition.

This film is especially for those who know that movies which are described by some as `about nothing' are usually the ones that are really about everything-everything that really matters. An intense and unforgettable journey for anyone with an emotional life.

Dreaming of Rupert Graves

[Lee-107 · 10/10 · 19 December 2002]

Film-making is all about Waiting they say. So is Love. This film epitomizes the seemingly unending Wait for the Right Man - that one man who signifies all that is beautiful and pure and noble of mind and body - someone worth living and fighting for. For Eva this Wait has even more poignance because she knows who that man is...that he's not just a figment of her imagination, but a living breathing man named Joseph Lees - someone whom she knows can broaden the horizons of her restricted world and love her for who she is and not for what he derives from her(which is how Harry loves her).

The case against Harry is not predetermined. It is established gradually. There are some touching moments between Eva and him when he's actually likeable. The scene in which he takes Eva out of the crowded boxing room is one such incident. Harry is at once boyish and likeable and selfish and despicable. Lee Ross has brought out these shades in his character brilliantly.

As much as it is Eva's story, it is also the story of Joseph Lees. And it is Rupert Graves, in the title role, who makes this film for what it is. He is a Dream(don't mean to pun!) in the film! I had only seen him in Louis Malle's 'Damage' which he did 7 years before 'Dreaming...', a film in which he looked much younger, though he was completely overshadowed by the oh-so-powerful Jeremy Irons who played his father. For the audience to feel any empathy whatsoever for Eva for dreaming of Joseph Lees for so long, the actor had to be someone for whom the audience would feel the same. And Rupert Graves is absolutely divine in the role! It is because of him that the audience too gets involved in Eva's quest for Joseph Lees. In any film of this sort, deriving empathy for the characters is everything. It is to the credit of Eric Styles, the director that he has managed that. From the beginning you know that these two people, Eva and Joseph *have to* be together. You laud Janie, Eva's little sister(wonderfully played by Lauren Richardson) in her efforts to bring them together. You frown at Eva's father who unknowingly acts as an obstacle between them.

Samantha Morton is excellent as Eva. It must be tough to act in a film where you have to cry so much and make it look real. She manages that. Her convulsive fit of tears in the end just before she rejoins Joseph is very well rendered by Morton. She has rendered the character with due grace and sensitivity.

Cinematography and music are two of the other wonders of this film. The former has added to the atmospheric quality of the film, capturing well the wild undulating beauty of the Isle of Man where the film was shot. The music has added beautiful lyrical cadences to the emotions in the film. Not surprisingly it is composed by a master-composer like Zbigniew Preisner whose music for Kieslowski's 'Blue' and other films is equally beautiful.

Worth dreaming....!!

British Drama is Best

[AZINDN · 8/10 · 1 February 2001]

Again, the Brits show off their capacity for quality adult drama, story lines not dummied down for public consumption, and actors whose ability to shine in roles without special effects, gratuitous nudity, and oversize lips makes this film a viewing delight. Rupert Graves is an actor whose face reflects emotional pain and sensuality in equal amounts. He is a treasure in this film. Stories of human dilema, period costumes, and location interiors add to the brilliant presentation.

poignant and beautiful

[gretch-4 · 4 November 2000]

i rented dreaming of joseph lees as a fan of rupert graves. i was not disappointed. samantha morton portrays eva as fragile, passionate, and naive, pining after her cousin joseph while living with the local pig farmer harry. harry's dependency and mental illness is disturbing and vaguely unexplainable; however, graves steals the film, sympathetically and realistically playing the mysterious joseph lees, carrying his own burden of a terrible accident in which is lost his leg. the ending is powerful and worth wading through the last half hour of harry's violent, pointless insanity and eva's maddening indecision.

A Beautiful Film That Shows How True Love Is Never Perfect

[drea_b · 9/10 · 25 July 2001]

I was sad to look in a store and know that I couldn't purchase this film because they didn't have it.

This was a wonderful film, not in the sense that is was happy and cheery, but in the sense that it brought you into the heart and soul of three people.

Samantha Morton was extraordinary in her role as Eva, the young woman torn between the love of her life, Joseph Lees (Rupert Graves) and the man she is obliged to (Lee Ross). Her passion and yearning for Joseph grows over the years, but she feels that she is obliged to Harry because he is madly in love with her and she has, in his eyes, has returned the same kind of love to him. When she finally reunites with Joseph her life is turned upside down and her heart is given the ultimate chance to be truly happy. She is torn between her duties and her heart, and Ms.Morton effectively shows this in her expressions.

Rupert Graves and Lee Ross are equally extraordinary in their roles. This film really beautiful and I think everyone should watch.

Great Movie

[ness978 · 10/10 · 2 November 2007]

This movie was great, starting off as Eva daydreaming about her second cousin Joseph Lees a Geologist who has been in Italy and has similar interests as her own.She meets Harry Flite a pig farmer who pursues Eva and badly wants her to be with him and Eva goes and lives with Harry and they have a very sexual relationship and seem in love. Then one day Eva's little sister and father turn up for a visit and she tells Eva that a relative is getting married and that all their cousins and second cousins are going to be there, which stirs her daydreaming to re-surface, she goes to the wedding and dances with her second cousin and when dropped back to Harry's place he trys to dance with her and have fun but she comes across as cold and harry picks upon this. After her cousin sends her some books she gets deeply interested in him further and Harry senses something is up they have a fight and he goes to watch another boxing match and some girl catches his eye,they have sex,wherever Eva was she returns and Harry is asleep on the bed and she kisses his hand and realizes the smell of cheating(other woman's sexual scent). Eva leaves and goes to her cousin where they make love a lot of times and Harry goes crazy and Eva feels bad and goes home to him only to have Harry go saw his leg off cause he can see she is aching to leave him again.her cousin turns up and she tells him to go cause she doesn't want Harry to know he is there,then she runs outside to her cousin and they share a passionate kiss.

Im thinking the ending meant she had to stick by Harry because it was expected in those days even though they were not married,so she is stuck with a burden. Lusting over a cousin like that is sickening I don't care if they were second cousins or not they are still part blood related,shame on you Eva.I saw this movie very late at night and I doubt you would find it in a video store these days.

Utterly Captivating

[raisishini · 25 July 2002]

I have recently seen the movie on television, and after the first time, I found myself compelled to rent the movie, so I did. I find the characters Joseph and Eva to be utterly captivating. The cinematography of the film perfectly captured their passion, their desire, their unextinguishable love. Lee Ross perfectly played the character Harry Flite in regards to capturing the character's desperation, and maddening obsession. Ross captured the character so perfectly that it made me despise the character. With all this said and done, I found the ending to be one of two things, thus bringing me to an undecisive state. Other than that, the movie is a must see for the melancholic ambiance of the film is undeniable.