Shirley Valentine (film) to retain the best of Willy Russell's theatrical devices . . . while opening out the action to embrace a big-screen atmosphere. The supporting cast, particularly Bernard Hill as Collins's Neanderthal husband, is equally convincing, with only the hammy Conti (glistening teeth and appalling accent) striking a momentary false note." Among reviewers who found the film banal and hollow, Caryn James of "The New York Times" observed, "By adding all the characters and settings that Shirley only talks about on stage, the film reveals the weakness of Mr. Russell's script as surely as if a magician's clumsy assistant had pointed
Valentine and Orson a European success for the tale. The works of François Rabelais have a number of echoes to the romance. Nancy Ekholm Burkert wrote and illustrated a version of the story in 1989, in which the story is told through the lens of a traveling group of players (including two brothers) who bring the story to a village in Flanders in the Middle Ages. Valentine and Orson Valentine and Orson is a romance which has been attached to the Carolingian cycle. It is the story of twin brothers, abandoned in the woods in infancy. Valentine is brought up as a knight