Tess: inescapable seduction?

Tess was the first movie directed by Roman Polanski after his flight from America to get away from the accusations of rape.

There is no way to talk about this subject (rape) when you look at Tess, for that is the big issue also in the book Tess of the d'Urbervilles by the British writer Thomas Hardy.

The movie is superb. The cinematography of Geoffrey Unsworth, who died of a heart attack during filming, is stunning.

Nastassja Kinski is so perfectly beautiful, demure and vulnerable that her seduction seems inevitable.

Sent by her father, a drunken farmer from Wessex County, to visit a wealthy family whom they believe are relatives, young Tess receives a job offer from her supposed cousin, the avid Alec who, in the first dialogue, already asks if the girl would be coming in search of pleasure.

Raped by her "cousin", Tess returns to her parents' farm where she finds herself pregnant. The sick son soon dies, but Tess is forbidden to bury him in a Christian graveyard because of its origin and the certainty of the local society that the death of the child would be a punishment from God.

Tess goes to milk cows on a farm and meets the pastor's son, Angel Clare, with whom she falls in love with. By the arts of fate, Tess cannot tell her secret to her future husband, only being able to do it on their wedding night. The beloved cannot bear to absorb the truth and leaves the wife, going to Brazil in search of a new life.

Abandoned, Tess is again besieged by her cousin whom she rejects at first, but by whom she becomes a lover to help her (now a widow) mother and her siblings.

Sick, Angel returns from America deeply regretted by the way he treated Tess and, after many searches, manages to ask her forgiveness in the house where the girl lives with Alec.

Tess decides to eliminate the person responsible for her absurd suffering, flees with Angel and finally consumes her happy marriage.

Trapped by police at Stonehenge, a well-known altar of sacrifice, Tess is arrested and sentenced to death.

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