The French Lieutenant's Woman (film) The French Lieutenant's Woman (film) The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 British romantic drama film directed by Karel Reisz, produced by Leon Clore, and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on the eponymous 1969 novel by John Fowles. The music score is by Carl Davis and the cinematography by Freddie Francis. The film stars Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. Other featured actors include Hilton McRae, Peter Vaughan, Colin Jeavons, Liz Smith, Patience Collier, Richard Griffiths, David Warner, Alun Armstrong, Penelope Wilton, and Leo McKern. The film received five Academy Award nominations. Streep was nominated for the Academy
The French Lieutenant's Woman into English. Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the narrator identifies the novel's protagonist as Sarah Woodruff, the "Woman" of the title, also known as "Tragedy" and as "The French Lieutenant's Whore". She lives in the coastal town of Lyme Regis as a disgraced woman, supposedly abandoned by a French ship's officer named Varguennes who had returned to France and married. She spends some of her limited free time on The Cobb, a stone jetty where she stares out to sea. One day, Charles Smithson, an orphaned gentleman, and Ernestina Freeman, his fiancée and a daughter of a wealthy tradesman, see