Coincidentally, William Nicholson's Firelight also features a couple of strangers who hole up for a few days of moaning and groaning. The first time Sophie Marceau's Elisabeth, a Swiss governess, has sex with Stephen Dillane's Charles, an English artistocrat, she just lies there while milord does his business. The second time, I'm pretty sure I detected une petite morte. Elisabeth has been hired by Charles to have his child, his wife having been left comatose by a riding accident. Still, Elisabeth gently but firmly refuses to play the role of surrogate mother, even though the Baby M case is 150 years in the future. She'd sooner die.
The movie itself dies a little death every time Nicholson turns up the volume on Christopher Gunning's 101-strings soundtrack, but otherwise it casts a nice late-winter glow. Set in one of those British country houses that never seem to have enough fireplaces, it's basically a Barbara Cartland novel that's been left out in the snow--a bodice-ripper that Nicholson takes care to dry out a little bit. That turns out to be just enough restraint to put the whole thing over. That and Marceau: A glowing ember, she could give Isabelle Adjani a run for her money as a woman whose ripe beauty causes men to do things they wouldn't otherwise dream of doing.
