Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders is loosely based on Daniel Defoe's indomitable heroine of the same name.

The film, which is set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, is about a young woman who will not put up with injustice. She experiences a bit of everything in her chequered existence. As a poor orphan she is taken in by a convent, where she is brought up by the nuns, who tacitly accept that the young girls are exploited by the priest.

For a while Moll is in luck, but her existence as a respectable middle-class girl does not last. Then she becomes a harlot for the charismatic Mrs. Allworthy. Finally she meets Jonathan Fielding, a young artist and nobleman, who first uses her as a model, then makes her his mistress before marrying her. When he dies, fate once again plays a trick on her.

Moll Flanders is quite entertaining, but still feels rather anonymous. There is more juice and vigour in the British TV series about Moll Flanders' dramatic life from the same year.