Jefferson in Paris (1995)

As a history buff, I'd been eyeing this movie for a long time, but I didn't get to see it when it premiered, and for some reason it's only now that I've been able to fix this gap in my education. Both critics and audiences gave James Ivory's film a lukewarm reception at the time, so my expectations were pretty low, and yes, I was bored for the first hour or so, which focuses on a lengthy romance between American ambassador (and later president) Thomas Jefferson (Nick Nolte) and a British married upper-class woman (Greta Scacchi). Lots of pretty visuals, costumes, talk, talk, talk, and unfulfilled courtship. But things come to life when the French Revolution breaks out and Jefferson's youngest daughter arrives with her nanny, 15-year-old mulatto (and slave) Sally Hemings, who would later bear the widower Jefferson six children. She is played with irresistible charm by a young Thandiwe Newton.

A good, but slightly overlong, colored by the numbers period melodrama