Iris

Iris - 2002 | 90mins | Drama | Colour

The Production Team

Director: Richard Eyre.
Producer: Robert Fox and Scott Rudin.
Script: Richard Eyre and Charles Wood. (from the book Iris: A Memoir and Elegy for Iris by John Bayley)
Cinematography: Roger Pratt.
Editing: Martin Walsh.
Production Design: Gemma Jackson.
Art Direction: David Warren.
Costume Design: Ruth Myers.
Makeup Department: Lisa Westcott.
Sound Department: Gillian Dodders, Steve Finn, Jim Greenhorn and Barbara McDermott.
Original Music: James Horner.

The Cast

Judi Dench - Iris Murdoch
Kate Winslet - Young Iris Murdoch
Jim Broadbent - John Bayley
Hugh Bonneville - Young John Bayley
Eleanor Bron - Principal
Angela Morant - Hostess
Penelope Wilton - Janet Stone

Plot Synopsis

Writer-director Richard Eyre’s sobering drama Iris is based on John Bayley's memoirs Iris: A Memoir and Elegy for Iris. Iris is an enchanting and finely acted personal drama starring Kate Winslet as the youngish and energetic Iris while Judi Dench portrays her ailing years. Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville portray the bumbling Bayley through the decades.

The film is a tender and extraordinary true story of the unconventional romance between novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch and critic John Bayley. Cutting back and forth, it portrays the free-spirited young Iris from her experimental Oxford days in the 1950’s, promiscuous and bisexual, when meeting the restrained lecturer John Bayley (Hugh Bonneville) who would later become her lover and husband. Bayley remained painfully aware of his wife’s infidelity yet chose to remain with Iris. Spanning 40-plus years of marriage to the 1990’s, Iris is slowly losing her fight with the degenerative Alzheimer's Disease whilst living in the legendary squalor of their home, while all the time her husband tends to her needs with selfless devotion.