The Pursuit Of Love - General Discussion

[OtterMommy]

The Pursuit of Love is an upcoming romance drama miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Nancy Mitford.

[AngieBee1]

It is currently airing on BBC One and is dividing fans on Twitter.  The reviews have been often brutal.  I found the three-parter incredible and enchanting and touching.  What I feared would be a dry mini was instead filled with vibrancy. Emily Watson did an amazing job directing and adapting the novel. 

[AngieBee1]

Finally out on Amazon Prime. 

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 1/27/2021 at 8:05 PM, OtterMommy said:

The Pursuit of Love is an upcoming romance drama miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Nancy Mitford.

A little shocked to see this described as a drama instead of a comedy. 

I have only seen the first episode so far. I liked starting with Linda in the air raid but I would have loved to get more of the younger children. I'm not sure what to make of Fanny -- she seems pretty enough not to have to take so much criticism for not being as attractive as Linda, and I am not sure whether she is striking the right balance of conventional enough to marry Alfred while wholeheartedly appreciating Linda. 

 

[Rickster]

Just saw the first episode last night. Thought the approach to the story intriguing and entertaining (have never read the source material).

One thing bothered me though. When Fanny and Linda go to Oxford for lunch, we have the scene where they watch everyone bathing in the river at the university. In the next scene, they are in the rooms for lunch. Fanny has a completely different haircut !(and different from her hair in all the previous scenes) Did she get it cut on her way to lunch? Is it an odd directorial choice? Or did I just miss something?

Edited August 9, 2021 by Rickster

[SomeTameGazelle]

5 hours ago, Rickster said:

One thing bothered me though. When Fanny and Linda go to Oxford for lunch, we have the scene where they watch everyone bathing in the river at the university. In the next scene, they are in the rooms for lunch. Fanny has a completely different haircut !(and different from her hair in all the previous scenes) Did she get it cut on her way to lunch? Is it an odd directorial choice? Or did I just miss something?

It was intentional misdirection. They see the other young women with cropped hair stripping down to their underthings. Their jaws drop.  Linda (touching Fanny's hair) says, "Come on, let's do it. We'd look so chic."  Cut to their arrival at Tony's: both of them have their hair cut shorter,  but Fanny's is more startlingly obvious.

[Rickster]

12 minutes ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

It was intentional misdirection. They see the other young women with cropped hair stripping down to their underthings. Their jaws drop.  Linda (touching Fanny's hair) says, "Come on, let's do it. We'd look so chic."  Cut to their arrival at Tony's: both of them have their hair cut shorter,  but Fanny's is more startlingly obvious.

Thanks! I took the line to mean strip down and jump in the river, didn’t notice a change in Linda’s hair.

[seth]

Anybody checking out this new Amazon 'period' series starring Lily James?

It charts the courses of two devoted cousins who go after love & life in different ways: One passionately and recklessly, one 'sensibly' and steadily.

We watched the first two episodes last night. It's gorgeously filmed and well-designed, directed by a fine actress herself, Emily Mortimer ("The Newsroom.")

It's also completely over-the-top, with many of the key characters portraying very stereotyped mockeries of type (the boisterous evil Father, the foppish Merlin, the by-the-book conservative rich bankers, etc,) anachronistic punk-rock music (it's set in the 1930s-40s) and in-your-face overacting. Sort of like what a British 'period drama' would look like if directed by the Marvel Universe.

Maybe they decided to co-opt the tone from "Bridgerton." 😂

[Ohiopirate02]

12 minutes ago, seth said:

Anybody checking out this new Amazon 'period' series starring Lily James?

It charts the courses of two devoted cousins who go after love & life in different ways: One passionately and recklessly, one 'sensibly' and steadily.

We watched the first two episodes last night. It's gorgeously filmed and well-designed, directed by a fine actress herself, Emily Mortimer ("The Newsroom.")

It's also completely over-the-top, with many of the key characters portraying very stereotyped mockeries of type (the boisterous evil Father, the foppish Merlin, the by-the-book conservative rich bankers, etc,) anachronistic punk-rock music (it's set in the 1930s-40s) and in-your-face overacting. Sort of like what a British 'period drama' would look like if directed by the Marvel Universe.

Maybe they decided to co-opt the tone from "Bridgerton." 😂

I didn't find this too over-the-top especially when you consider the source material.  Nancy Mitford mined her family and their upbringing to create the characters.  I thought Emily Mortimer did a great job adapting the book and including known facts of the Mitfords while subtracting the Nazi elements.  After Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, I am used to anachronistic music used in period dramas.  

This project was conceived well before Bridgerton became a thing last year.  This is not one of the soon-to-be numerous Bridgerton knockoffs.  

[seth]

Thanks for those clarifications, Ohiopirate. And I respect your not-too-over-the-top opinion.

For me, the top two hard-to-believe characters are Dominic West's Uncle Matthew - it's just too lopsided a cartoon character - no one is that big of a blustering asshole all the time...and the Lord Merlin character: he gets thoughtful & sensible in later scenes, but in his first appearance, there is no way that kind of a bi-sexual, slithering costume dance would have taken place in 1930s England, and no way in hell Matthew would have allowed it in his house. He would have stopped it immediately, rich neighbor or not.

And even though Emily Mortimer is a superb actress (and now director,) her Bolter character also seems inauthentic & cartoony. It's just too hard to believe any one that self-absorbed would have a child, and would treat their own child with such a total lack of love & care if they did have one.

But that's just my 3 cents :-)

[SomeTameGazelle]

3 hours ago, seth said:

For me, the top two hard-to-believe characters are Dominic West's Uncle Matthew - it's just too lopsided a cartoon character - no one is that big of a blustering asshole all the time...and the Lord Merlin character: he gets thoughtful & sensible in later scenes, but in his first appearance, there is no way that kind of a bi-sexual, slithering costume dance would have taken place in 1930s England, and no way in hell Matthew would have allowed it in his house. He would have stopped it immediately, rich neighbor or not.

In the source material both Uncle Matthew and Lord Merlin are over-the-top in different ways. With regard to the dancing, I think it was more shocking than what Nancy Mitford describes in the book (where the most modern dance was the Charleston) but it is meant to go with the anachronistic music and also to convey how different from the normal country aristocrats the Bright Young Things were. Mortimer is not aiming for realism. It is an exaggerated reality with some grounding in the fact that Mitford drew from her own family.

I had forgotten until now that Emily Mortimer was in the movie Bright Young Things based on the Evelyn Waugh novel Vile Bodies. Taking into account the anachronistic twist and conceding that Louisa's ball was not the place for it, the dance itself does not seem farfetched for Vile Bodies or Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate. 

My chief complaint about Lord Merlin was that he seemed much younger than I had envisioned the character, and perhaps crosser. He should have his moments of crossness but his moods should be cooler in contrast to Uncle Matthew's hot temper.

4 hours ago, seth said:

And even though Emily Mortimer is a superb actress (and now director,) her Bolter character also seems inauthentic & cartoony. It's just too hard to believe any one that self-absorbed would have a child, and would treat their own child with such a total lack of love & care if they did have one.

Again allowing for exaggeration, the Bolter did her best in leaving Fanny with her more responsible sister, Emily. She was very young when she got pregnant and either imagined or was pressured by her family to imagine that she would adapt to motherhood. If she didn't have the self-awareness to recognize that she was too self-absorbed to raise a child at that point, that doesn't necessarily mean that it would prevent her from bolting later. And of course Linda is shown as positively hostile toward Moira and essentially bolts from her.

[seth]

SPOILER ALERTS:

Yes, we saw the final episode. We were left with a feeling of terrible sadness for the way the "over-reaching misery of life" was portrayed in the 'splendid isolation' of these pampered people's existence. But perhaps that was Mitford's intention.

Truly scary and desperate to see a woman so infatuated with her quest for a lifelong true love, certain that is the only avenue to happiness, that she wastes her whole young life chasing it and then dies after having (by her own account) '5 of the happiest months.'

Hell of a price to pay for such foolish self-absorption, driven by ignorance...or would Fanny say 'innocence?'