Directed by Ralph Fiennes. Starring Felicity Jones and Ralph Fiennes. Rated PG.

It’s easy to picture Charles Dickens stuck in his study, pen forever at the ready. He was, in fact, a popular raconteur, paid to travel the breadth of England and beyond, reading from Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities, as well as staging his now largely forgotten plays.

He was also a man, as explored in a film lovingly directed by Ralph Fiennes and starring him as the famous writer. (Fiennes fits both roles more comfortably than in his recent retooling of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.) On one of these theatrical jaunts, in 1857, the middle-aged author met 18-year-old Ellen Ternan, a budding actor played here by Like Crazy’s excellent Felicity Jones. Some say they secretly cohabited until the end of his life, in 1870.

Scripted by Abi Morgan, who wrote far sketchier screenplays for Shame and The Iron Lady, The Invisible Woman draws from Claire Tomalin’s same-named biography, a work of hard-to-verify conjecture. We know that Ternan, called Nelly, lived to be a respected rural teacher, and that she looked nothing like Felicity Jones. This version is framed by somewhat furtive recollections of her time with Dickens, who loved the limelight and left his wife (Brit-TV veteran Joanna Scanlan) after she bore him 10 children, in the process growing fat and indifferent to his work.

The film’s stark tone sometimes resembles that of The Piano, with frequent images of an easily affronted figure, usually dressed in black, marching across bleak seascapes. But it eschews allegory in favour of the nuts and bolts of Victorian patriarchy, especially regarding relations between variously powerless females. In particular, there’s the little issue of Ternan being handed to Dickens by her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas), who saw no better future for the girl than hiding in the shadow of a Great Man.

Given his prolixity, it’s a shame that said Man left behind no record of our feisty heroine. This makes his view of her unknowable, and clouds our perceptions, as well. But then no one said that invisibility would be easy. Okay, maybe H.G. Wells did, but that was a whole different philanderer.