Sommersby

Name: Sommersby
Start: 2026-07-06T20:45:00-04:00
Location: Somerville Theatre

Schedule

Mon, 06 Jul, 2026 at 08:45 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Somerville Theatre | Somerville, MA

Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.
Screening with Overboard (35mm) as part of our Kurt & Jodie double feature series.
Six years after Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn made the surprisingly charming gaslight comedy Overboard, Jodie Foster and Richard Gere made this more serious take on the premise of a woman falling in love with a man who claims to be her husband but whom she knows is not.
Sommersby is an American remake of the Oscar-nominated French historical drama film, The Return of Martin Guerre (1982). It moves the story’s setting to Tennessee in the days immediately following the end of the Civil War. Gere plays a Confederate officer returning to his rural community after years away fighting. While at first many aren’t sure if he’s the man he claims to be, most soon come to accept him as John Robert “Jack” Sommersby after his wife Laurel does.
Foster finds the nuances in the complex role of a woman who engages in either a conscious or unconscious act of denial because she prefers living with a man who may be an imposter to living with the cold, indifferent man who was her husband.
The period details and gorgeous cinematography by Philippe Rousselot (Diva, Hope and Glory, A River Runs Through It) enhance this compelling mystery romance, but it is the cautious chemistry of its two leads that make the film distinctive and memorable.