By Libertad Gills

In The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949), Mary (Ann Todd) is torn between two men: the boring husband (Claude Rains) and the exciting lover (Trevor Howard). She goes back and forth between them, undecided. What does she want? Lean explores cinematic ways of conveying what characters are thinking, with a special emphasis on the female protagonist. Even though she doesn’t voice it herself, the men tell her what she wants and why she cannot have it: her problem is that she “wants to belong to herself” and that’s why she cannot give herself over to romantic love. She will have a “failed life”, warns her lover, and this thought comes back to haunt her leading her to suicidal thoughts and eventually back to her husband’s secure arms.