Susan Granger’s review of “SOLOMON & GAENOR” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Oscar nominated as Best Foreign Language Film, the love story called “Solomon & Gaenor” is set in the Welsh Valleys around 1911. Solomon (Ioan Gruffudd) is a young Orthodox Jewish boy whose parents run a pawnshop and drapery business. For added income, he trudges through the gray mist of the muddy, wet valleys selling cotton fabric door-to-door. That’s how he meets gentle Gaenor (Nia Roberts), whose father and elder brother are miners. They’re immediately attracted to each other but Solomon – painfully aware of the rampant anti-Semitism of the period and rebelling against his heritage – conceals his Jewish identity, telling her his name is Sam. After surprising her with a pretty dress of red calico that he made himself, they become clandestine lovers. In a deliciously awkward scene, he meets her family. “Now I want to meet your family,” Gaenor pleads. “I want to make it right.” But Solomon, ashamed, knows his devoutly religious family will not accept her, nor him if he chooses to stay with her. Meanwhile, his sister becomes suspicious, Gaenor gets pregnant and is denounced in chapel, and there’s a strike at the coal mine. The ensuing scandal spells tragedy in director/writer Paul Morrison’s confident, well-directed screenplay. And what etches “Solomon & Gaenor” indelibly in your mind is the beautiful photography the evokes the time, the place, and the mood. On the minus side, is the low-key, uneven way the story unfolds slowly, utilizing a measured, meandering pace. English subtitles translate the Welsh and Yiddish. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Solomon & Gaenor” is a tough, uncompromising 7. It’s “Romeo and Juliet” in Wales, capturing the exquisite pleasure and unbearable pain of first love.
