Angel Deverell (Romola Garai) is certain of her writing despite her humble station. Her widowed mother has a grocery store and sees her as an useless dreamer. Publisher Theo Gilbright (Sam Neill) accepts Angel's book Lady Irania and is surprised to find the author to be actually a woman. His wife Hermione (Charlotte Rampling) doesn't really like the brash self-obsessed ingénue. Lady Irania becomes a great success and Angel buys the local mansion Paradise. She hires admirer Nora (Lucy Russell) as her secretary and marries Nora's womanizer indebted artist brother Esmé (Michael Fassbender). When war breaks out, she is angry that Esmé joins up to fight ruining her perfect life.
Romola Garai is great at playing the annoyingly self-obsessed over-dramatic character. That's a double-edge sword. She's not particularly likable but she is fascinating. She's basically a bratty flamboyant teenager in a costume drama. The movie does kind of work in the same way her overwrought melodramatic novels work. That's a sort of poetry.
Romola Garai is great at playing the annoyingly self-obsessed over-dramatic character. That's a double-edge sword. She's not particularly likable but she is fascinating. She's basically a bratty flamboyant teenager in a costume drama. The movie does kind of work in the same way her overwrought melodramatic novels work. That's a sort of poetry.