Firelight is a 1997 period romance film written and directed by William Nicholson and starring Sophie Marceau and Stephen Dillane.

The film is about a woman who agrees to bear the child of an anonymous English landowner in return for payment to resolve her father's debts.

[3] In 1837, French-speaking Swiss governess Elisabeth Laurier agrees to bear a child for an anonymous English landowner in return for money (£500) needed to pay her father's debts.

She begins to keep a journal of watercoloured flowers and plants, adding a page for each of the holidays and her daughter's birthdays which occur while they are apart.

The anonymous Englishman is Charles Godwin, a landowner and struggling sheep farmer, who can barely keep the creditors of his philandering father, Lord Clare, at bay.

Though she acknowledges the father's loving relationship with his daughter, Elisabeth is appalled by the lack of control Charles has over the girl.

Outside of class, Louisa spends all of her spare time in the lakehouse, a small belvedere on the estate in the middle of a lake, which can only be reached by boat.

More than forgotten it never happened.Elisabeth finds that this helps Louisa concentrate on her lessons, knowing there is a time at the end of the day when there are no rules.

Charles suddenly announces that the entire estate is being appraised for sale, purportedly to cover his overwhelming debts.

On a bitterly cold night, Charles consults his conscience as to whether his wife, Amy, would want him to release her from her catatonic prison of ten years.

After the sale of the Godwin estate, Charles, Elisabeth, and Louisa leave on a snowy day to begin their new lives together as a family.