Usually if there are two separate timelines featured in a story, the director tries to ensure that we cannot readily distinguish between one that might be true and one that might be artificial. It's the complete opposite that really works well here as we mingle the story of an 18th century woman living within the constraints of high Victorian society with a more profligate 1970s one. To fit out the earlier scenario, we meet the shy "Sarah" (Meryl Streep) who is rebounding from a liaison with the titular French lieutenant by having an even less suitable assignation with the altogether more decent "Charles" (Jeremy Irons). The modern day scenario has the same two actors playing "Anna" and "Mike", only both are married to others and they are the "real" life actors portraying these other characters in a film of their lives. Now we get to experience the story of both relationships undulating in parallel. It sounds way more complex than it actually is as a combination of Harold Pinter's adaptation of the original novel and the acting from both Streep and Irons manages to convince us that though we are seeing two separate stories play out before us, they have remarkable similarities in the life imitating art sort of space. I preferred the older scenario, but only because the supporting cast of characters could make much more of their rigid, sexist and downright hypocritical environmen…

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