Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea

The sensual film based on the acclaimed novel by Jean Rhys.

NC-17 1993 · 98 min · ★ 4.9 · Thriller, Drama, Romance

In the wake of Jamaican emancipation, French colonist Annette Cosway falls into poverty and marries racist Englishman Paul Mason. But when Annette's young son dies in a fire started by former slaves, Mason flees to England, leaving his grief-stricken wife and her Creole daughter Antoinette behind. Soon Antoinette learns she must marry to claim her inheritance and sets her sights on Rochester, an Englishman eerily similar to Mason.

Directed by John Duigan · Written by Jan Sharp

Your Rating

Where to Watch

Rent or Buy

Cast

Karina Lombard Antoinette Cosway
Nathaniel Parker Edward Rochester
Rachel Ward Annette Cosway
Michael York Paul Mason
Martine Beswick Aunt Cora
Claudia Robinson Christophene
Paul Campbell Young Bull
Naomi Watts Fanny Grey
Rowena King Amelie

Make it a double feature

3h 9m together

Wide Sargasso Sea

The Journey of August King

Both from John Duigan.

More from John DuiganSee all →

The Trespassers

The Trespassers · 1976

The Trespassers

In 1970, political journalist Richard lives with Penny but is having an affair with actress Dee. The two woman meet and become friends.

Vietnam

Vietnam · 1987

The trials and tribulations of the Goddard family after the entry of Australia into the Vietnam War.

Lawn Dogs

Lawn Dogs · 1997

In the affluent, gated community of Camelot Gardens, bored wives indiscriminately sleep around while their unwitting husbands try desperately to climb the social ladder. Trent, a 21-year-old outsider who mows the neighborhood lawns, quietly observes the infidelities and hypocrisies of this overly privileged society. When Devon, a 10-year-old daughter from one family, forges a friendship with Trent, things suddenly get very complicated.

The Year My Voice Broke

The Year My Voice Broke · 1987

The Year My Voice Broke

MovieDramaRomance

Set in 1962, a young prepubescent boy in rural Australia watches painfully as his best friend and first love blossoms into womanhood and falls for a thuggish rugby player, changing the lives of everyone involved.

Romero

MovieDramaHistory

Romero is a compelling and deeply moving look at the life of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who made the ultimate sacrifice in a passionate stand against social injustice and oppression in his county. This film chronicles the transformation of Romero from an apolitical, complacent priest to a committed leader of the Salvadoran people.

Far East

Far East · 1982

A cynical Australian Vietnam War veteran runs a sleazy bar in the Philippines. His old flame enters his life again asking for help when her husband, an investigative journalist, is prosecuted by the junta for discovering too much.

Dr Terrible's House of Horrible

Dr Terrible's House of Horrible · 2001

Dr Terrible's House of Horrible

Dr Terrible's House of Horrible is a satirical British comedy-horror anthology series created by Graham Duff, who co-wrote the series with Steve Coogan. Spoofing the British horror films of Amicus, Hammer, and Tigon, the title parodies Amicus' 1965 anthology film Dr Terror's House of Horrors. Coogan presents each episode as the titular Dr Terrible, and plays the lead in each story.

Vietnam

Vietnam · 1987

SeriesWar & PoliticsDrama

The Goddard family is about to be torn apart by the arrival of Australian conscription during the Vietnam War.

The Journey of August King

The Journey of August King · 1995

The Journey of August King

The Journey of August King is a multi-dimensional drama about a North Carolina farmer in 1815. August King, a widower, is on his way home as he does every year after selling his produce and purchasing the stock and goods he will need to survive the winter. On his journey, he comes upon a run-away slave, a young woman about 19 and August King must decide to violate the law and help this slave to freedom or else leave her to be hunted down and, ultimately, returned to her slave owner.

Dalmas

Bert Deling's surreal, button-pushing and hallucinogenic paean to the emerging possibilities of avant-garde and homemade filmmaking. Telling the tale of a violent ex-cop searching for the man who killed his partner, the film takes an unexpected turn when he encounters drug lord Plastic Man and a tribe of LSD enthusiasts. What follows is both literal and metaphorical mayhem as the boundaries of the film start collapsing and our idea of what's real is pushed to its very limits.

Flirting

Flirting · 1991

MovieDramaRomance

Two freethinking teenagers - a boy and a girl - confront with authoritarian teachers in their boarding schools. The other students treat this differently.

Sight

MovieDramaHistory

Ming Wang is an impoverished Chinese prodigy who flees Communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. When tasked with restoring the sight of an orphan in India, who was blinded by her stepmother, Wang must confront the trauma of living through the violent uprising in his youth, the Cultural Revolution.

Careless Love

Careless Love · 2012

Linh (Nammi Le) is a Vietnamese Australian university student who secretly starts part-time work as an escort. She develops a close rapport with one of her clients, an enigmatic American art dealer, who books her on a regular basis. For a time she manages to keep her two lives in separate compartments. But when she falls for a fellow student her worlds collide and she must deal with the emotional chaos that follows.

Room to Move

Room to Move · 1986

MovieTV MovieDrama

Carol is a top runner, coached by her father day and night. Then she sees Angie, the punk new girl, dancing magnificently and alone. The two become friends and Carol begins to rebel, but the all-imporant race is coming up!

Head in the Clouds

Head in the Clouds · 2004

Head in the Clouds

MovieDramaRomance

Gilda Bessé shares her Paris apartment with an Irish schoolteacher, Guy Malyon, and Mia, a refugee from Spain. As the world drifts toward war, Gilda defiantly pursues her hedonistic lifestyle and her burgeoning career as a photographer. But Guy and Mia feel impelled to join the fight against fascism, and the three friends are separated.

The Parole Officer

The Parole Officer · 2001

The Parole Officer

MovieCrimeComedy

A hapless parole officer is framed for murder by a crooked police chief. To prove his innocence he must entice his former clients away from the law abiding lives they are now living to recover the evidence that will save him.

More Like This

Hannibal Rising

Hannibal Rising · 2007

Hannibal Rising

MovieCrimeThriller

The story of the early, murderous roots of the cannibalistic killer, Hannibal Lecter – from his hard-scrabble Lithuanian childhood, where he witnesses the repulsive lengths to which hungry soldiers will go to satiate themselves, through his sojourn in France, where as a medical student he hones his appetite for the kill.

Letters from Iwo Jima

Letters from Iwo Jima · 2006

Letters from Iwo Jima

MovieActionDrama

The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.

Notes on a Scandal

Notes on a Scandal · 2006

Notes on a Scandal

MovieDramaRomance

A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.

Gloomy Sunday

Gloomy Sunday · 1999

MovieDramaRomance

Budapest in the 1930s. Restaurant owner Laszlo hires pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody sets off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans falls in love with Ilona as well.

The Dreamers

The Dreamers · 2003

MovieDramaRomance

When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.

Stalker

Stalker · 1979

MovieScience FictionDrama

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.

Greed

MovieDramaCrime

When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.

The Rapture

The Rapture · 1991

MovieMysteryDrama

A lonely telephone operator leading an empty, amoral life finds God – only to have her faith continually tested in ways beyond what she could have imagined.

sex, lies, and videotape

sex, lies, and videotape · 1989

sex, lies, and videotape

Ann, a frustrated wife, enters into counseling due to a troubled marriage. Unbeknownst to her, her husband John has begun an affair with her sister. When John’s best friend Graham arrives, his penchant for interviewing women about their sex lives forever changes John and Ann’s rocky marriage.

Party Monster

Party Monster · 2003

MovieComedyDrama

The New York club scene of the 80s and 90s was a world like no other. Into this candy-colored, mirror ball playground stepped Michael Alig, a wannabe from nowhere special. Under the watchful eye of veteran club kid James St. James, Alig quickly rose to the top... and there was no place to go but down.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer · 2006

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

MovieCrimeFantasy

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in the stench of 18th century Paris, develops a superior olfactory sense, which he uses to create the world's finest perfumes. However, his work takes a dark turn as he tries to preserve scents in the search for the ultimate perfume.

25th Hour

25th Hour · 2002

MovieCrimeDrama

On the eve of a seven-year prison sentence, a New York drug dealer spends his final day of freedom confronting his past, his relationships, and the choices that led to his downfall in a city still reeling from 9/11.

Cool Hand Luke

Cool Hand Luke · 1967

MovieDramaCrime

When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.

Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago · 1965

MovieDramaRomance

The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter