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Admirable film.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Having just read the book, I was really looking forward to the film adaptation.What a disappointment. The film felt extremely rushed, with no development of the characters. I did not for one minute believe the "affinity" between Selena and Margaret and so, consequently, felt nothing about the ending. Which did NOT do justice to the book. More time should have been spent showing the relationship between Margaret and her family members, for instance. And more emphasis on Selena's previous life and Peter Quick. And, lastly, more about that awful prison and what the women had to endure.Read the book if you want "the real deal" and to be suspended in excitement, suspense and terrific writing!

Affinity was the television low point of Christmas 2008. It seemed to have been thrown together at the last minute, with jarring editing, terrible sound balances, and a script that seemed to have been put together by a cliché-filled computer. Everything seemed wrong - the men's facial hair, the extras' wooden street-walking, the dreadful music, the sheer repetitiveness (we turned it into a drinking game: one finger for 'walks nervously through prison gates', two fingers for 'walks nervously into cell'; we all got very drunk.) I loathe wobbly-cam shots, trying to watch characters as they bounce around the screen in a haphazard fashion, but occasionally, it can be bearable - Bourne, for instance. 'Affinity' was not the place for wobbly-cams, especially when they are mixed - seemingly at random - with steady shots. I hate to ask it, because he is supposed to have TV's Midas Touch, but is Andrew Davies entering 'Emperor's New Clothes' territory?

I read the novel first, and was so glued to it that i got through it in the matter of a weekend. when i went to see the film i was not expecting to be as impressed as i was through reading it, but this adaptation is as magical as the novel and did it the justice it deserved. it is they type of film that can be watched time and time again without losing its appeal. i would recommend it to anyone, regardless of whether they like period dramas or not, because it is not the average period drama - it is a film that transcends time, and will reach some part of every person. personally i would go and watch it innumerable times if i could, and cannot wait for the release of the DVD.

No doubt this is definitely not the best movie adopted from Sarah Waters' works, as far as I'm concerned. However, it's also not at the bottom of the list. I kind of like this dramatic plot but strongly detest the false ending.Similar to Fingersmith, Affinity is a story of skin game. A woman plans to acquire her own freedom or even happy life on the sacrifice of another miserable woman. The swindler commits her scheme successfully through all the lies and deceptions. But there's no winner in Sarah Waters' stories. Huge price is paid. The conspiracy costs too much, purity, clear conscience, and maybe more.The victim of Affinity, Margaret, was at the tragic focus. Living in a traditional society and a high-brow community, she found herself homosexual. Her secret lesbian lover, Helen, betrayed her and it made things even worse that Helen married her brother and made herself Margaret's sister-in-all. The only consolation left to Margaret was a strand of hair in her necklace lock. She kept all her secrets there and in her diary. Six months after her father's death, she was offered a job in Milbank Jail as a lady-visitor. There, she ran into her destiny, Celina.Celina was sentenced to a four-year imprisonment. But the movie generously provides scenes to support her claim of innocence. Margaret devoted her curiosity, compassion, and finally her affection to this so-called affinity, which turns out to be beguilement in disguise.Celina fled away with her real partner Vigers in a ship while Margaret committed suicide by drowning herself in the river. The ending would be prefect if it just stopped here or at most with Celina's inexplicable tear drops. The illusionary intimacy in water and Celina unquenchable grief which aroused Vigers' strong reproof "Remember whose girl you are" are really too much.Is the affinity between them real or just a lie? I would like to make it unknown if I were the film director, because it is unknown. Who could tell for sure that Margaret killed herself out of nothing else but losing her one love of lifetime? She was desperate, when she was cheated for the second time, when she was given the last straw and taken away immediately after, when she lost everything she had, her money, her wooer, her hope for a brand new life. I cannot deny that she had a crush on Celina, but was it true love without any impurity? And as to the adorable puppet and great performer, Celina, who knows who her real affinity was? They were far away from affinity, not even close.I haven't read this original novel yet so that I don't know whose idea it is to fake or at least exaggerate their love in the end. Sarah Waters, probably. She's too merciful. Maybe that's true that she worked out Fingersmith years later to compensate the sadness of this tragedy. It's a much better work.Most of Sarah Waters' protagonists are lesbians. But I think she's intended to tell more than homoerotism. She writes about people. Women, especially the homosexual ones, are the most sensitive and sophisticated group of all. Sarah Waters makes her novels a stage, to reveal their, or to be more accurately, our life, love, desire, solitude, and the darkness in the deepest of our hearts. Lesbians are the representatives rather than all her subjects.As one of the woman audience, I've seen myself mirrored in her work, more or less. And I've been seeking for the solution of life from her masterpieces. Have I found the answer? No, I haven't. I don't know if I can or if anyone else can. I even cannot tell for sure whether there's something like that in her creations or in this world. But one thing is certain that Sarah Waters tells us through her stories: Affinity may not find us some way out. But deception absolutely leads to destruction and corruption.