Set in 19th-century Britain, The Governess—the first film from writer/director Sandra Goldbacher—stars Minnie Driver as a bright young Jewish Londoner who, following the murder of her father, passes herself off as a Christian in order to earn a living as a governess for a wealthy family living on Scotland's Isle of Skye. Once there, she has to cope with both culture shock and the family's bored mother, bratty daughter, and black-sheep son. Complicating matters further is her growing emotional and physical attraction to the clan's inventor father (Tom Wilkinson) and her intellectual and artistic attraction to his attempts to create the first lasting photographs. While a few moments of slack storytelling almost do in The Governess—it drags in spots—and it never seems quite as emotionally involving as it could be, the film handles a number of different subjects deftly. Not simply a sort of Anglican Like Me, The Governess nicely conveys the manner in which history glosses over the contributions of the marginalized without presenting its characters as two-dimensional. Beautifully filmed and nicely acted, especially by Driver, The Governess is an effective exercise in how history's oversights can be addressed.