Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Angela Robinson
Screenplay:  Angela Robinson
Starring:  Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote, JJ Feild, Oliver Platt, Connie Britton
Running Time:  108 mintes
Genre:  Biography, drama

The film tells the story of Professor William Moulton Marston (Evans), an American psychologist, inventor and writer, who is best known for inventing an early version of the lie detector and creating the comic book character Wonder Woman.
The story begins in 1928 where Martson and his wife, Elizabeth (Hall), teach and research together at Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges.  The two fall in love with their teaching assistant, Olive Byrne (Heathcote), one of William Marston's students.  Olive reciprocates their feelings, and the three enter into a polyamorous relationship.  Their unconventional relationship leads to severe problems for their personal and professional lives.  Meanwhile William Marston continues his work on his DISC (Dominance, Inducement, Submission, Compliance) theory of human interaction and becomes increasingly interested in  fetish art and bondage, which he channels, along with his belief in the inherent superiority of women over men, into the comic book Wonder Woman.

This is a biographical drama, it's not really a film about Wonder Woman.  The main story of the film is told in flashbacks as Marston gives evidence in 1945 to a committee who are seeking to ban Wonder Woman over it's sexual, sadomasochistic and queer imagery and subtext.  It's very well made, beautifully filmed, very well cast, with an intelligent, witty script that shines a light on a fairly obscure but fascinating piece of pop-culture history.  Personally I would have liked to have seen more about the comic book industry of the time, but that is not the story that they are telling.  In fact, Wonder Woman itself is more of a subtext in the film, the framing device notwithstanding, it's not until pretty late in the film that comics come into it in a big way.  The focus is mostly on the relationship between the central trio:  Luke Evans certainly looks the part of the 1920s academic, and plays Marston as an earnest idealist; Bella Heathcote is radiant as Olive Byrne who captivates both Marstons, and she is very good, particularly in the early part of the film where she has the greatest emotional heft playing a naive young woman whose entire world is capsized as she explores her new feelings, although she has less to do later in the film, but Rebecca Hall takes the acting honours as the fierce, funny and caustic Elizabeth, the realist of the three.  She is brilliant.
It may not have enough about Wonder Woman to appeal to some of the fans, and the comic book element may put off some viewers, but it is definitely worth giving it a go.

Rebecca Hall, Luke Evans and Bella Heathcote in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women