(1998) Justine Waddell magnificently portrays Tess, the maid of Marlott, in this three-hour A&E adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel, directed by Ian Sharp from Ted Whitehead's screenplay, set in the mid-19th-century landscape of Wessex, England, just as steam-driven machinery was being introduced to farming and transforming the old ways agriculture. The scenery and characters present a convincing cinematic canvas of the period while Waddell embodies Hardy's description of a beautiful, innocent 16-year-old country girl who in a span of four years fulfills a tragic vision of a victim of circumstance.

"Good day, Sir John," cries out Parson Tringham passing Jack Durbeyfield (John McEnery), informing the sentimental farmer of his connection to the D'Urbervilles, an ancient, noble lineage all but extinct. At the same time his daughter Tess is dancing on the green among other white-clad girls waiting for their partners when three young men from afar happen by, one of whom dances with the girls, though Tess declines. While Jack takes undue pride in his newfound status, his wife Joan (Lesley Dunlop) suggests their sending Tess over to Trantridge where another, prosperous branch of the D'Urberville family resides, hoping for some sympathetic help - the only horse has been killed in an accident, for which Tess feels particularly guilty.

Tess meets Alec (Jason Flemyng), the presumptuous son of a blind, invalid woman who lives in the new-built mansion; he arranges for Tess to manage the poultry farm and turns his attentions on the beautiful girl, assuming a country lass without means will soon succumb to his better standing. (While we learn in an exchange between the son and mother that Alec's deceased father "annexed the old name," in this version Tess remains in the dark until years later.) On the road at night Alec rescues Tess from a row with a peasant woman; but as he rides off with her holding on to him from behind, the woman says to the others: "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

In the woods after failing to win Tess over with a gentle, generous approach, including his having provided her father with a new horse, he rapes her. A few weeks afterward she sneaks off to return home, though he overtakes her on the road, promising after she refuses his offer of a ride to help her in any way if she's in need. Ignoring his earlier proffer, she gives birth to a sickly baby, baptizing and burying it herself.

Two years later she again leaves her home, finding work in the lush valley of the Great Dairies on the kindly Mr Crick's farm where she makes acquaintance with Angel Clare (Oliver Millburn), who's apprenticing himself to become a farmer. Eventually they recognize each other from the dancing in the meadow in Marlott. To Angel's comment, "This business of being alive is pretty serious," Tess replies: "I want to know why the sun shines on the just and the unjust." When the butter won't come, someone repeats an old wives' tale: "Somebody's in love." What's comedy to others only reminds Tess of her tragedy.

The other girls, each fond of Angel, dream of having him for themselves; but when he carries each of them, one at a time, on their way to church (which he doesn't attend) in their Sunday best, across a flooded road, he says to Tess, the last to be carried, who at first demurs, that the other two were for her sake. When their affections have entwined them, Angel asks her to marry him. Mournfully declines: "I only want to love you."

Finally Tess explains why she cannot marry him: since he has remarked on his hatred of old families and the ancient aristocratic principle, he wouldn't approve of her family's having been descended from the D'Urbervilles. "Take my name and escape your own," recommends Angel, who has renounced religion in favor of moral values of simplicity and purity. Against her mother's warning of revealing her dreadful past because men are proud of their respectability, Tess writes a letter of confession the night before she is to be wed. Angel demonstrates no reaction when he sees her in the morning; but the envelope she'd slipped under his door had lodged beneath the rug unseen, which she recovers and burns.

Following the wedding - ominously a cock crows in the afternoon - Angel takes Tess to a honeymoon residence once having belonged to the D'Urbervilles, which he has rented a week for them to be alone together, and gives her an heirloom necklace with earrings. Each believing the other the ideal, the perfect representative of fantastic illusion, not flesh and blood susceptible to common sin, before proceeding to consummation, Angel clears his conscience by confessing to a brief debauchery in London with an older woman, expecting Tess will forgive his indiscretion. Readily - "Oh, Angel, I'm almost glad" - she does but then unsparingly shares her own sordid past with Alec.

Unfortunately Angel is not so forgiving: "You were more sinned against than sinned," but "You're not the woman I loved … fresh virginal daughter of nature … not a woman." When she cannot swear that the fault lay entirely with Alec, Angel harshly declares: "How can we live together while that man lives, your natural husband?"

To keep up appearances, Tess will return to her parent's home. For a third time she departs from her parents' abode, this time laboring under harsh, horrible conditions in Flintcomb-Ash. As the narrator intones "the cruelty of lust and the fragility of love," Tess finds shelter and companionship with Marian, whom she'd known at the dairy farm, who urges Tess a year past to write to Angel of her plight.

By chance Tess comes across Alec, a convert to Methodism, preaching publicly, though she says she has no belief in such sudden changes of heart. Learning of the child's death, he says: "I would have helped you." He begs her - "You're a deserted wife" - to come live with him. Later, resuming his former role following his mother's death, he again beseeches her - "neglected by one who should cherish you" - to come away, offering as well to provide for her mother and siblings. In desperation Tess writes to Angel, asking him to save her from temptation, but after her father dies, forcing the family to abandon their dwelling, she sends a final missive: "I will try to forget you."

Finally Angel reappears on the scene, asking first Marian and then Mrs Durbeyfield for Tess's whereabouts. Her letters had gone unanswered because he was ill in Brazil; but with his return to England, having read them, he set out to find her, determined to show her mercy after so many injustices and cruelties had been visited upon her. Angel eventually manages to get her mother to say only that Tess resides in Sanbourne, a city on the coast. His persistence locates her in a guest house where she, Mrs D'Urberville, lives with Alec: "It's too late." He pleads: "It is all my fault."

In this version of the story, we are shown nothing of Angel's family. Further, from Sanbourne until the ending at Stonehenge, I was disappointed in the rushed pacing of events. There is no stain of blood gradually expanding on the ceiling for Mrs Brooks, the householder at The Herons, to notice, raising her suspicions of foul play. Worse, I disliked the change from the original of Tess's finding out only at Sanbourne of Alec's not being a D'Urberville but a Stokes.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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