The film revolves around a series of dramatic events. The events begin with a girl who lives in a rural area with her father, the farmer, but turns their lives after they know that they are the offspring of a rich and very rich family. When they went there, they discovered that they were not descendants of this family. Do you return to her lover the farmer or stay with the man who wants to pay her everything for sex.
Visually, Tess is a masterpiece, capturing in amazing detail the scenery and atmosphere of the England of yore. The film's chief drawback, however, is its lack of vitality.
Roman Polanski is one of those men who, despite his icky treatment of women in real life, manages to create strong and compelling female characters for the screen.
Without Mr. Polanski's name in the credits, this lush and scenic Tess could even be mistaken for the work of David Lean.
Chicago Reader
January 01, 2000
een in the context of Roman Polanski's career it becomes something rich and strange, shaded into terror by the naturalistic absurdism that is the basis of Polanski's style.
Though not one of Polanski's best features, this adaptation of Thomas Hardy's challenging novel, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, is intelligent if flawed, but it's nice to look at due to excellent production values, particularly cinematography.
The film, like its source, is filled with pessimistic fatalism, but it spares no pity for the instruments of fate [...] What, if anything, this meant to Polanski remains unknowable.
