Serena (2014)

First off, don't believe any reviews that claim the book was great, because it wasn't, and if you want to know why, check various book sites, as it's been reviewed by enough readers, including myself, who found it severely lacking in character development and general engagement. Anyone who enjoyed it had to be subconsciously filling in the blanks, and this movie at least does that much, using actors we like to bring some humanity to the book's wooden and opaque archetypes. The storyline is always compacted in a film adaptation and what was lost from the book wasn't that important overall, and if you view this as a Cliff's Notes of the novel you'll be better off. If you really need to read the book, do it after you see the movie, so you can at least add some subtext to the characters.

Jennifer Lawrence is great (as always), and that alone is enough for me to rate the movie as good -- but I also think the story is interesting and original. It is better than most other films, including the ones that are shown over and over on cable channels. I am surprised that so many people are so critical of it. (I had seen a script on line before seeing the movie, and I was surprised that the ending was different. I like the original ending better.)

The movie is a little short a quite different then the novel. They don't show how George and Serena fell in love. It also doesn't show the passion between them, except some sex scenes. The novel is better. They are a sort of Bonnie and Clyde because of the murders but they also bribe. It's like the director didn't have the time to make a good plot. Everything suddenly happens. If the movie would be 3 hours instead of 2, they could show how important authority was for Serena, the passion of their love (not just some sex scenes), the troubles with Rachel and her son, how Serena got mad and the killing of people who stand in their way. Really: read the novel! It has a better plot and a better ending. I also don't think 'Serena' was a good title for the movie. Even though Jennifer Lawrence had a lot of screen time, she was important to George and Galloway and that's it.

I have not read the book, and I see that most of the naysayers have. To me, knowing nothing about the book, this was a well-made film and the acting quite good, relative to some of the movies I've seen of late... I did find the "moral" a bit hard to swallow. Something like "barren women are doomed to misery". Seriously, Serena has a miscarriage and her life begins to unravel until finally she is driven crazy by the fact that her husband fathered another woman's child. The woman had been working at the timber company delivering meals with "extras" to the cabin where the owner of the company stayed before he met Serena, who stole his heart and became his wife. I enjoyed gaining some insight into how these timber camps worked in earlier times in North Carolina. The nature was beautiful and the corruption depicted and power struggles over land seemed pretty realistic. Definitely worth sitting through for the visuals alone. I might even watch this one again because of the excellent cinematography.