Tipping the Velvet (the movie)

My Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

I know I don't usually do movie reviews, but the other night I saw the BBC made-for-TV movie of Tipping the Velvet, a book I previously read and reviewed by Sarah Waters, so I wanted to talk about it here. I thought it was really good, though I still think the book was slightly better. (Isn't that always the case? LOL)

At nearly 3 hours, it was fairly thorough and consistent with the book, though some parts of Nan's life, like when she was working the streets and living with Grace and Mrs. Milne, was made a wee bit shorter as if to gloss it over a bit. You never really got the impression about how close Grace had grown to her, and they left out the part where she returned a few days after she moved in with Diana to get her outfits and let the Milne's know she wasn't returning. Though they did sort of allude to it because DH turned to me and said, "How'd she get her outfits back?" Didn't she leave them all at the Milne's?" So I explained that in the book, she did return a few days later to pick up her stuff and let them know she was leaving. They also changed the circumstances surrounding Nan's initial meeting with Florence, before she hooked up with Diana, though that didn't really affect the movie all that much.

I'm glad this was made in Britain as opposed to the U.S. because Americans are way too hung up on sexuality and I'm sure they would've definitely complained about the sex scenes. Personally, our society's hangups over sexuality are a huge pet peeve of mine so it was refreshing to see a movie not shirk away from the subject of girl-on-girl love.

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie, and was glad that I supplemented my reading of the book by seeing it as well. :)