Bovie Movie

Ten years before Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility was transformed into a lavish theatrical feature by director Ang Lee, the property was adapted as a rather less lavish but no less entertaining British TV miniseries. Irene Richard and Tracy Childs starred as Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two attractive sisters from a prominent British family. When the Dashwoods go broke after the death of their father, the flighty Marianne and the more reserved (and, need we add, more intelligent) Elinor go on an exhaustive search for proper, and properly wealthy, husbands. Sense and Sensibility was served up in three 60-minute portions by the BBC.

In this blend of psychological thriller and courtroom drama, Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter) is a 19-year-old college student who begins displaying bizarre and troubling behavior; as her actions become increasingly destructive and shocking, Emily begins speaking in strange tongues and destroys religious symbols that surround her. Emily’s parents believe that their daughter has become possessed of the devil, and the Catholic Church agrees to authorize an exorcism of the young woman. As Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson) attempts to drive the demons from Emily’s body, the girl dies in the midst of the taxing ceremonies, and Father Moore finds himself charged with negligent homicide. Attorney Erin Brunner (Laura Linney) is hired to represent Father Moore against prosecutor Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott), who intends to prove there were concrete medical explanations for Emily’s behaviors, including epilepsy and schizophrenia, all leading to a heated courtroom debate between the notions of faith and science. The Exorcism of Emily Rose was inspired by the real-life story of Annaliese Michel, a young woman from Germany who died in 1976 after priests in Wurzburg spent eight months attempting to exorcise demons from her body.