MRS. SOFFEL

year: 1984 cast: Diane Keaton, Mel Gibson, Matthew Modine, Terry Quinn rating: ***

Somewhere between BADLANDS and DEAD MAN WALKING lies MRS. SOFFEL, a time-period melodrama about a warden’s Christian wife, played by a wistful Diane Keaton, who, while handing out bibles on death row, gets enamored with a slick, handsome folk hero, a young Mel Gibson soon to be hanged with younger brother Matthew Modine.

Whether it’s true love, or the fact Gibson’s character (who sounds strangely like Eric Roberts) has a way of conning naïve women, the underlying passion between the polar opposites, with the gray prison bars between them, is an engaging buildup to the inevitable escape and, during the final act the trio: Keaton, Gibson and Modine, ride a sled through the snowy winter with Terry O’Quinn’s posse on their tail.

The romantic aspect is somewhat thin – if Gibson resembled an everyman prisoner, would there be a film at all? But the direction, gorgeous cinematography and apt performances provide a spellbinding combination of style and substance, although there’s more of the first than the latter.