This is a period piece, set in the 18th century. There are lots of characters but only 4 that really count. The actors who play these 4 must really be good, and they all are. Mostly paced deliberately, with little action, it pays off for the patient viewer who likes to read a good book or watch a good story unfold.
Robin Wright Penn is the central character Moll Flanders. She was born to an imprisoned woman, who was hanged right after. Moll was raised in orphanages and foster homes, but eventually found herself at a home with a red light in front, a brothel. That she eventually became a "working girl" out of necessity also resulted in her escape from that life.
Morgan Freeman is Hibble, and for most of the story is seen finding and escorting via carriage a young girl of 9 or 10 from an orphanage to an unknown destination. He is to read to her along the journey from a journal. It was written by the mother the girl never knew, and who we find is Moll Flanders. It is his reading from this journal that we begin to see, as the movie, told in a flashback format.
Stockard Channing is Mrs. Allworthy, the madam of the brothel, and the mother figure that Moll never had. But she is also the one who auctioned off Moll's virginity.
The fourth key character is John Lynch as the Artist. He shows up at the brothel long after Moll had become undesirable. He was looking for a girl, the cheaper the better, for he had not much money. We find out later that his father is wealthy, but this artist had gone off on his own to make his career. He only wanted Moll as a model, and not to sleep with.
Good story, good movie, the cinematography is outstanding.
SPOILERS: Hibble is to take the girl to the new world, America. In a flashback the artist, now her husband, had died and we see that struggling Moll had left her daughter temporarily in the care of a friend, but when Mrs Allworthy showed up unexpectedly and captured Moll to bring her to the new world, the baby was left behind. We also see that the ship encountered a storm and was shipwrecked and, as Hibble narrated, "The name of Moll Flanders went down with the ship." Which was a giveaway to the ending, Moll Flanders didn't die, only her name. Mrs Allworthy actually died and Moll took her name, and her fortune. Hibble was her ally. The movie ends with Moll and her daughter being reunited.
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