Television Reviews : PBS’ ‘Wreath’ Captures the Heart of Loneliness

The desperation of isolated, lonely people for an emotional connection to ease the bruising of their souls is a potent force for self-deception and victimization. The aching fragility of such people, particularly women, is the theme of an exceptional “Masterpiece Theatre” offering, “A Wreath of Roses” by Elizabeth Taylor (no, not the actress), which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on Channels 50 and 24 and at 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15.

Well-directed by John Madden from a superb dramatization by Peter Prince, the film begins when two strangers--Camilla (Joanna McCallum), a rigidly constrained single woman approaching middle-age, and Richard (Trevor Eve), a handsome, ex-RAF pilot--witness a ghastly suicide at a train station. The year is 1949.

The incident prompts an intimate undercurrent between the two that Camilla grasps with timid determination as a last chance for salvation from dreary spinsterhood.

They are staying in the same quiet English village--Richard at the local inn, Camilla with her best friend Liz (Elizabeth Richardson) at the home of Frances (Fabia Drake), a painter in her 70s.

It is not just Camilla who is emotionally battered. Liz, a new mother, is treated as a child by her egocentric clergyman-husband. She chafes against it, but her dependent girlishness and her perceived superiority of the role of wife and mother are too deeply ingrained for any real change.

Frances, a gifted artist, is forsaking her “beautiful” paintings of nature, women and children. She has come to regard them as lies in a world full of darkness and pain.

Meanwhile, Camilla quickly sees a disturbing, unsavory side to Richard’s personality, but she is helpless in the face of her own need.

All the actors share scenes rich in substance; their eloquence is as much unspoken as spoken. Each flawlessly portrays the delicate vulnerability of Taylor’s lost souls caught up in an inexorable human tragedy that unfolds against a backdrop of ordinariness--waiting for a train, picnicking on a balmy day, getting caught in the rain--and that serves as a mirror for uneasy contemplation.