Sommersby

Sommersby (1993) is a historical romantic thriller you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Jon Amiel and starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. A US-French co-production running 114 minutes, it's a remake of the French film The Return of Martin Guerre and set in the post-Civil War American South.

Jack Sommersby has been gone for years. The war — and whatever came after — kept him away. When he walks back into the small Tennessee town where his wife Laurel has been managing alone, people notice he has changed. He's gentler. Smarter. He organizes the failing farms around him into something that might actually work. Laurel herself isn't certain this is her husband. She's not entirely sure she wants to know the answer.

The film is really a question about identity and what a person owes to their past self. Gere plays ambiguity well here — you can't quite read him, which is exactly what the story needs. Foster does the harder work: her Laurel knows more than she lets on, and the film's moral weight rests on her choices. A slow-burn drama that takes its premise seriously. Stream Sommersby (1993) online on iFILM.