Hotel du Lac [DVD] [1986]

Anita Brookner, who died last year (10 March 2016, aged 87) was thought by some to be the Jane Austen of modern Britain. Like Jane, Anita wrote mainly about women, and not just any women. Her heroines were usually single, lonely, sometimes overprotected by family members (especially mothers), and often limited professionally by the male-dominated job market. They were also intelligent, perceptive, well-educated and high-minded, an old-fashioned term which generally means noble, including the virtues of courtesy and politeness, traits that may have contributed to their isolation, as things old-fashioned are rarely the new cool. These women were anachronisms, throwbacks to a time when courtesy was considered normal and desirable, not freakish and comical.Some critics complain that all her novels are the same, which only proves they are careless readers. The same charge was levelled against Jane Austen in her day, but now we know better, having examined the novels in careful detail. Of course writers will write about the themes that matter most to them, so patterns develop that run through the books. This is fine, perfectly acceptable. In fact, such continuity adds to their authenticity and verisimilitude. We can rely on the writer to be honest. Anita’s repeated themes were love, loss, isolation, disappointment. Also, art, literature, learning, travel and culture. Many of her characters are cultured because she herself was, the first woman to hold the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge University. For years she taught and wrote about art, only turning to literature quite late (in her early 50s).Of the half dozen novels by her I’ve read, “The Bay of Angels” (2001) is my favourite. But second is probably “Hotel du Lac”. It won the Booker Prize (as it was then known) in 1984. A pity most people remember her for this book only, if they remember her at all. But the future, like most things, is fickle, so we cannot be sure how posterity will view her. If someone had told the parson’s daughter Jane Austen in 1815 that she would one day be remembered with the likes of Shakespeare, Milton and Chaucer, she would have laughed. But now she has eclipsed both Milton and Chaucer, and her only serious rival to Shakespeare is probably Dickens.What made “Hotel du Lac” so beautiful? The writing, setting, characters. Some books seem perfect, impossible to improve upon. This one and “The Bay of Angels” are. Naturally, this is opinion, since perfection is only ever an ideal. But when I think of these books they honour that ideal.The film (made in 1986) is largely faithful to the book, though less engaging (at least for me).Edith Hope is hopeless, a writer of romance fiction. Hopeless because the books by and large are mediocre, the market for trashy books saturated. But she’s established and her royalties are sufficient to give her a life of sorts. She gets by. She has even saved enough to go abroad. One of her haunts is Switzerland, particularly the French-speaking part around Lake Geneva (where Hotel du Lac is located). Here the air is fresh, the wind off the lake pure, the atmosphere cosmopolitan, the mood leisurely. People come here to sit, be served, relax, gossip. It’s a getaway geographically, if not psychologically, as there’s never any escape from personal history and the self.The English are fond of Hotel du Lac, the hotel by the lake. They are disproportionally represented here among the French and Italians. Edith is conspicuously English: pale complexion, formal manners, reticent mind, mumbled speech. The rules of social engagement on the Continent differ from those back home. In England one knows who one can boss around, accents and demeanour the cues that signify ‘social inferiors’. So too domestic uniforms, visible markers of social rank or station. Edith is middle class, part of a class of social risers that gravitates toward the gentry, distancing itself from the working class for effect.But Edith does not go in for effect. She doesn’t pretend to be something she’s not. She’s too inward, retiring, modest, reserved to attempt it. Plus she lacks the requisite confidence to believe in its powers of seduction and success. Only in her fiction does she pull up anchor, letting her imagination soar. Some of her characters are passionate, though she herself barely knows this turbulent state. So in a sense her books are unrealistic, based on experiences she hasn’t had herself.She’s also well past her so-called prime now, perhaps verging on 40, single and never married.Edith has a theory, an interesting one. In life we’re told the tortoise always wins the race. The tortoise is slow but has stamina. Its pace is steady, its mind methodical. It needn’t stop to catch its breath because it never works up a sweat. It just keeps on going. The hare, on the other hand, is impetuous, impulsive, fast. It can easily win the race by merely pacing itself. But it does not. Its impetuosity stands in the way. It exhausts itself in bursts of speed that require rest thereafter. Thus one siesta toward the end of the race becomes the hare’s undoing. He falls asleep and only wakes up as the tortoise is crossing the finish line.A nice narrative, and we want to believe in it, but it’s all wrong, back to front. Romance fiction writers love this ending, bestowing its rewards on themselves voyeuristically via their favourite characters. They are the ones who write about romance, whereas true romantics are too busy loving and being loved to write about love.Look around. It’s the hares who always win: the prettiest, the slimmest, the sexiest. The cover girls, catwalk models. They’re the ones in demand, ones who have raced through the programme to become as beautiful as they can. Speed has preserved their youth, or given them more of it to use and flaunt. They have won and reap the rewards: money, attention, prestige, security (from a rich man). The tortoises in life don’t win. They lose. They’re frumpy, slow, ugly, neglected. They aren’t worth noticing. They sit alone at Hotel du Lac, for instance, with food on the table but starved for attention.Yet Edith does attract some notice. She’s there. She exists. She’s not thin air. Who is she? What does she do? Where is she from in Britain? Why is she here? And for how long? It’s nosiness, more than anything, this attention. It’s idleness too, stemming from boredom. There are other lonely people here too.Why, exactly, has Edith come here on her own, speaking little French and knowing no one? Early on in the novel Brookner hints at it by saying:“[Here] she could be counted on to retrieve her serious, hardworking personality and to forget the unfortunate lapse that had led to this brief exile.”Unfortunate lapse, brief exile. Whatever its cause, her banishment is not permanent. She has come here seeking solace, penance and forgiveness. Her spirit needs mending. She hopes she can recover, hopes there will be no complications. But it’s bound to be hope against hope, as there are almost always complications.Something happened in London. Edith threw a garden party. Her best friends were invited. Everyone drank wine, got a little tipsy. Things were said, intimations made. She got involved later with a married man from the party, a man married to a good friend of hers. Hush, hush. No one knows or will find out. But these things are difficult. One slip-up starts tongues wagging. And once they start they’re hard to stop.Scandal ensues. Bad feelings abound. How could she have, Edith who always minds her P’s and Q’s? Honest and reliable Edith. There are millions of men in Britain. Why this one, the spouse of a good friend? If she knew, her mind might lay the thought to rest. But she doesn’t. Furthermore, she isn’t over him yet. Her body is in Geneva, but her mind still dwells in London and the past. She can’t stop thinking about him and writes long letters to him, none of which she has sent over the past two weeks. She thought working on her latest novel, writing it here, would be the cure. But she can’t concentrate on it. Instead, she daydreams, seeing and feeling her body touched by the man she loves.Her friends in London were patronising. Edith is so inexperienced. She hasn’t grown up. She can’t handle a mature relationship. She doesn’t know what love is. She’s a lovelorn character from one of her bad novels living in a saccharine fairy land.So, she is banished. Her friends have sent her into exile, hoping it will help her grow. She is shamed and mortified, as she was meant to be by them.The dining room is a set piece at Hotel du Lac, the place where an ensemble of characters meet and interact. Mrs. Pusey and her daughter Jennifer are there. They always travel together. They like shopping for clothes and jewellery on the Continent. Mr. Pusey, who pays for it all, isn’t around, perhaps by design (his). Mrs. Pusey is a chatterbox, one of those who can’t keep the chatter inside the box (where most would prefer it). Jennifer, aged perhaps 28, hardly says a thing, trained as she has been — almost like a dog — to sit and listen. When she does chime in it’s to agree with whatever her mother has said. Boring is too generous a word for them.Other lonely people: Madam de Bonneuil, banished to the hotel permanently by her son; Monica, also in exile from her husband; and Mr. Neville, a bachelor in late middle age, aged perhaps 50 or more.Neville is charming, always a twinkle in the eye and soft smile on his lips. He seems to be enjoying life like one who has understood the in-joke of it and doesn’t worry anymore. He’s happy go lucky, a hearty gent who loves to laugh, tease and flatter.Edith tries to ignore him. She knows he’s a charmer, a man full of sweet words and selfish intent. She knows he is preying on her, looking for her vulnerable spots. He’s a leopard in the brush of the savanna waiting to pounce. But in the battle between loneliness and attention, attention usually wins out. Neville is adept at the sport, having refined his techniques over the years. He is patient, persistent, determined. He even has an ace up his sleeve: a proposal leading to engagement. How serious is he? We’d like to know, and so would Edith. Can she truly trust him? Over the ensuing days or weeks she convinces herself she can. Neville, in truth, could be her saviour.But Edith is cautious and timid. She knows from her books where passion can lead. She has to be sure, she needs more time. And it’s during this interval she discovers important things about Neville.Books or life? Ideally, it should be both. But if it comes down to choice, how can books compete with life? Bookish Edith is the answer to this with her life so incomplete, a creature neglected and disappointed.Anita Brookner has created a great tragic heroine in Edith Hope. Her portrait is vivid and honest. The emotions are real, not pasted on. We hope Edith will succeed in something more meaningful than her cheap mass-market novels. But we have our doubts.The film is a BBC production, which means it should be great. Alas, the label doesn’t always ensure greatness. The film looks washed out to me. The cinematography in such a setting should have been better. The actress Anna Massey is fine as Edith but in my mind’s eye I had pictured someone slightly younger and a little better looking, though Edith could never be regarded as beautiful. So I’ve given the film four stars instead of five based on its production values.Edith is the usual Brookner protagonist, an intelligent, sensitive woman overlooked and under appreciated. Elsewhere in her fiction Anita writes:“Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy. But it is very rare because most people are strategists.”“Hotel du Lac” abounds with beautiful examples of this perceptive truth.

This was made for the BBC in the 1980s. It is now quite dated, as you'd imagine, and the colours are washed out, but I loved it. We'd recently studied the book on a course, prior to lockdown, and I'd intended to watch the film with classmates. In fact I watched it with my partner, who also enjoyed it, and have since passed it on to others. The film version is faithful to the book, which won the Booker prize in 1984. We particularly enjoyed the scenery of lakes and mountains, which reminded me of previous holidays. Such memories are precious in lockdown.

This movie is very out of date now in terms of attitudes to women and relationships, but is it really? The movie covers various topics in a way that feels fresh and raw and I was spell-bound by this movie. The film quality looks washed out and muted, but I thought it just added to the movie, as it is set at the end of the summer season and the hotel is nearly empty. The scenes of Switzerland are stunning and it's good to see a film that has a heavy focus on the female characters. The hotel itself is now very different. It's called the Park Hotel (in Vitznau) and it's been completely rennovated. The nearby towns of Vitznau and Gersau that feature in the movie are still very similar. The soundtrack is quite haunting and works really well. The DVD also includes a commentary by the screen writer and producer which was very interesting.

If you have ever had problems which needed to be sorted out this film shows you how to do it.Anna Massey plays a romantic novelist. Although she creates characters for her books, she cant read real people and knows nothing about human nature.The guests in the Hotel du Lac where she goes to escape, are anything but what she believes them to be...All the characters are living un-real lives, Googie Withers as the overbearing mother, Denholm Elliot as the philandering wanderer, Patricia Hodge as the child longing wife and Irene Handel as the abandonded old lady are all brought to life by wonderful acting.The location of the film, the Swiss Lakes in Autumn, gives the film a luminous quality that gradually overtakes everthing else.This gentle film probes the depths of the human condition and over the course of her stay she learns what means the most in her life.A wonderful film to curl up with on a Winters Evening......

Great adaptation. The cast were brilliant. I especially liked the mother and daughter and Googie Withers and Julia Mckenzie were excellent. Although Irene Handl had a relatively small part, she played brilliantly the sad aristocratic Madame.

A story from a different era. Some beautiful Swiss scenery and some spoilt wealthy people trying to make out they are better and/or more wealthy than they are. Nice to see the talented Anna Massey in a light romantic role. Some beautifully-drawn characters, including Irene Handl as an aristocrat; now there's an original bit of casting!

I read the book before I bought the DVD and thoroughly enjoyed it so sent for the DVD. It tells an old fashioned story about a woman who is sent away to a hotel on the continent by her friends, to let the dust settle after ditching her 'boyfriend' at the altar. The scenery and acting are wonderful with great performances from Denholm Elliot, Anna Massey and Patricia Hodge. I would recommend reading the book first as it is beautifully written and there is a very unexpected ending. A wonderful film to watch on a Sunday afternoon.

I love this film, not for anyone who wants a fast paced film. Anita brookner wrote the book.