Rowing with the Wind

Rowing with the Wind is a 1988 Spanish film written and directed by Gonzalo [Suárez (director)|Gonzalo Suárez]. Concerning the English writer Mary Shelley and her circle, it stars Hugh Grant, Lizzy McInnerny, Valentine Pelka, and Elizabeth Hurley. It won six Goya Awards.

Plot

In the summer of 1816, English poet Percy Shelley, his soon to be wife Mary Shelley, and Mary's stepsister and companion Claire Clairmont take a holiday with Lord Byron and his physician John William Polidori at a villa rented by Byron at Lake Leman, Switzerland.
Byron challenges each of the friends to write a horror story, and Mary begins her novel, Frankenstein. She imagines the monster becoming real, and for the next six years, as tragedy befalls those around her, she believes the creature of her imagination is the cause.
Meanwhile, Claire has Byron's baby, is estranged from him and barred from seeing her daughter. Byron and Percy continue their friendship, the one hedonistic, the other idealistic. The Shelleys move near Pisa.

Production

Shooting locations included the , Switzerland, and Venice.

Reception

of El País declared Rowing with the Wind a "very ambitious film that almost always lives up to its ambition", falling short of being a masterpiece because of a lack of interest of a few scenes and because of the small presence of actress Lizzy McInnerny in the face of the "enormity of the tragic task that the film has in store" for her character.