The Governess is a 1998 British period drama film written and directed by Sandra Goldbacher. The screenplay focuses on a young Jewish woman of Sephardic background, who reinvents herself as a gentile governess when she is forced to find work to support her family.
Set in the 1830s, the story centers on Rosina da Silva, the sophisticated eldest daughter of a wealthy Jewish Italian family living in a small enclave of Sephardic London Jews. When her...
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The Governess is a 1998 British period drama film written and directed by Sandra Goldbacher. The screenplay focuses on a young Jewish woman of Sephardic background, who reinvents herself as a gentile governess when she is forced to find work to support her family.
Set in the 1830s, the story centers on Rosina da Silva, the sophisticated eldest daughter of a wealthy Jewish Italian family living in a small enclave of Sephardic London Jews. When her father is murdered on the street and leaves behind numerous debts, she forsakes an arranged marriage to an older suitor, transforms herself into Mary Blackchurch - a Protestant of partial Italian descent - in order to conceal her heritage, and accepts a position as a governess for a Scottish family living on the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides. Patriarch Charles Cavendish is a man of science intent on solving the problem of retaining a photographic image on paper, while his pretentious wife flounders in a sea of ennui. Their young daughter...
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