Year of Release: 1990
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Ron Silver, Annabella Sciorra, Uta Hagen, Fisher Stevens, Jack Gilpin, Christine Baranski, Stephen Mailer, Christine Dunford, Felicity Huffman
Genre: Drama
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 8
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Synopsis and Review:
Director Barbet Schroeder has had a diverse and interesting career. "Reversal of Fortune" followed "Barfly", the first feature he directed in the US, and was focused on the life of writer Charles Bukowski. "Reversal of Fortune" is based on the real life case of Sunny von Bulow, an American heiress born Martha Sharp Crawford in Virginia, who after a first failed marriage, marries Claus von Bulow, a Danish/British socialite. The film is narrated by Sunny, who is in a coma, after falling into a diabetic shock which occurred following a Christmas party. Her husband Claus, is accused by her two elder children of attempting to murder Sunny, by giving her an overdose of insulin. Claus resorts to Alan Dershowitz in order to reverse the case, and while the attorney is initially against taking the case, he finally acquiesces, since he has other cases that need funding, something that the von Bulow case can pay for. He and his team (comprised of a variety of professionals and students), go through all the data, in order to understand the facts, but also clarify and hopefully dismiss the prejudice against the charming and cold Claus.
"Reversal of Fortune" is an interesting film in the sense that, when it starts, we already know the fate of one of the lead characters. Sunny von Bulow, never recovered from that coma, and eventually passed away in 2008. What makes the film so compelling, is the way it showcases the information that defines these characters lives. Much like a detective story, it traces the backdrop to all these characters lives, while also considering multiple alternative scenarios, and never really giving a clear definition of what actually happened. There's conjectures, hypothesis, but the film never solves anything, and the characters, particularly the stupendous Jeremy Irons, walks the fine line between debonair/charm and possible guilty/assassin. The film manages to perfectly capture the universes that it sets out to showcase, starting with the life of luxury lived by Sunny, Claus and their families, the life of attorney Alan Dershowitz, and his colleagues/team members and finally the courtroom scenario, where all the facts, findings and suspicions get analyzed, dissected and showcased. It's a finely drawn film, very well edited by Lee Percy, with a beautiful cinematography from Luciano Tovoli. The cast is uniformly fantastic, but Jeremy Irons is simply superb and towers over all the proceedings of the film. Glenn Close and Ron Silver provide solid support. A very good film always worth revisiting.
"Reversal of Fortune" is an interesting film in the sense that, when it starts, we already know the fate of one of the lead characters. Sunny von Bulow, never recovered from that coma, and eventually passed away in 2008. What makes the film so compelling, is the way it showcases the information that defines these characters lives. Much like a detective story, it traces the backdrop to all these characters lives, while also considering multiple alternative scenarios, and never really giving a clear definition of what actually happened. There's conjectures, hypothesis, but the film never solves anything, and the characters, particularly the stupendous Jeremy Irons, walks the fine line between debonair/charm and possible guilty/assassin. The film manages to perfectly capture the universes that it sets out to showcase, starting with the life of luxury lived by Sunny, Claus and their families, the life of attorney Alan Dershowitz, and his colleagues/team members and finally the courtroom scenario, where all the facts, findings and suspicions get analyzed, dissected and showcased. It's a finely drawn film, very well edited by Lee Percy, with a beautiful cinematography from Luciano Tovoli. The cast is uniformly fantastic, but Jeremy Irons is simply superb and towers over all the proceedings of the film. Glenn Close and Ron Silver provide solid support. A very good film always worth revisiting.
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