Any resemblance between this big-budget, sex, violence, and more sex-filled adaptation and Nathaniel Hawthorne's original melodramatic novel of hypocrisy and repression is almost accidental. Instead, this is a free adaptation of the story, meaning the time frame, setting and major character names are the same, but very little else. The prologue depicts a Native American funeral and their restless rumblings about their Puritanical neighbors. The minute Hester sets foot in the town she is treated suspiciously because she chooses to live alone until her husband comes. Not long after her arrival she spies a sexy naked man swimming in a forest pool. Later she discovers that he is the town's new pastor Arthur Dimmesdale. When the two meet they are instantly attracted to each other and it isn't very long before they are expressing their intense attraction physically in the grain bin of a barn. Hester feels no guilt because she has just heard her husband has died. Then she turns up pregnant. The outraged town jails her until the child is born. She then wears the infamous "A" because she refuses to identify the father. If she does, he could be killed. Suddenly her husband, who had been captured by the Indians returns and that is when the trouble really starts.
![Sound of Metal [Criterion Collection]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0715515277211_p0_v5_s90x140.jpg "Sound of Metal [Criterion Collection]")
![Reunion in France [Commemorative Packaging]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0012569797352_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Reunion in France [Commemorative Packaging]")
