A haunting tale of sexuality in a country gone wrong.
In a dystopian, polluted right-wing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.
- Sexual violence
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Character
Grave, earnest, contemporary and classical in form.
- gravecomic
- earnestironic
- contemporarynostalgic
- classical in formformally daring
- warmbleak
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“Is The Handmaid's Tale emotionally manipulative?”
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“Is the dystopia too on the nose?”
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Reviews on TMDB
Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Tastebuds's numbers.
- CinemaSerfon TMDB · Jun 20246/10
Yikes, but there must have been some volume of hairspray used in this production that makes the "Stepford Wives" look like an ordinary family street. The women are divided into two groups in this futurist version of the USA. The blue are the privileged and wealthy, the red are the surrogates in a society that cannot now readily breed. A few lucky men are the commanders, lording over everyone and having their own fun trying to conceive children much as roosters fertilise hens. "Kate" (Natasha Richardson) is one such red dress. She is to be indoctrinated into the mansion run by "Serena Joy" (Faye Dunaway) so she can service the sexual needs of the boss (Robert Duvall). Now they only have a certain amount of tries at the conception lark, and if they don't come up with the goods then they go back to an homeless oblivion. She isn't getting pregnant but nobody dares to ask if it's the "Commander" who is firing blanks so she befriends him, tries to earn his trust whilst all along making plans with his driver "Nick" (Aidan Quinn) to get the hell out of the place. She might just be in luck as there is an increasing unrest amongst society at large with this hierarchical and zealous societal
Read the whole review on TMDB - GenerationofSwineon TMDB · Jan 202310/10
Now look at this, someone made the Handmaid's Tale into something watchable. You know what the difference between this and the series is? I'll give you a hint it's two things... do you have it yet? Time and story. The TV show has FAR too many episodes, and each is far too long to tell a compelling story. The 1990 HBO version is only about 100 minutes. It's not dragged out to the point where it is filled to overflowing with, well, with filler. It delivers a clean and concise story that didn't spare a cut. And because of that it works. But.... it also has Faye Dunaway, and it has Natasha Richardson, and it has Robert Duvall, and it has Aidan Quinn... and those are all people that everyone would be honored to cast, and they were certainly people that anyone would be thrilled to cast back in 1990. So, what you have is a clean script that is void of unnecessary filler (and in the case of the TV series, free of painfully long unnecessary filler) and that script is acted out by some of the best people in the industry. You can't ask for more.
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Cast
- Natasha RichardsonKate
- Faye DunawaySerena Joy
- Aidan QuinnNick
- Elizabeth McGovernMoira
- Victoria TennantAunt Lydia
- Robert DuvallCommander
- Blanche BakerOfglen
- Traci LindOfwarren / Janine
- Zoey WilsonAunt Helena
- Kathryn DobyAunt Elizabeth
Crew
- Volker SchlöndorffDirector
- Harold PinterScreenplay
- Margaret AtwoodNovel
- Igor LutherDirector of Photography
- Ryuichi SakamotoOriginal Music Composer
- David RayEditor
- Daniel WilsonProducer
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