Mrs. Soffel is a 1984 American drama film directed by Gillian Armstrong, starring Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson and based on the story of condemned brothers Jack and Ed Biddle, who escaped prison with the aid of Kate Soffel, the warden's wife.

It was filmed on location in and around the Serez family farm in Mulmur, Ontario, as well as Wisconsin (train sequences) and establishing shots in Pittsburgh.

She visits inmates to read Bible scripture to them and meets Ed Biddle and his brother Jack, robbers who were sentenced to death for the murder of a robbery victim.

He later writes her a note asking her to help their escape by providing hacksaw blades for their cell door bars, which she does.

During a stop at an abandoned factory, Ed surprises a man who had noticed them in Perrysville and had followed them for the bounty of $5000 which had been posted as reward for their capture.

Later, Kate is sent to the same Pittsburgh prison, where she is seen cradling the poem that Ed had written her and that a friend had helped her smuggle into the cell.

Pauline Kael wrote: What's daring in the way Gillian Armstrong presents this love story is that we don't quite trust the emotions of either Kate Soffel or Ed Biddle.

She's sickly, frustrated, unstable; he's an opportunist, with only one opportunity-- to make her love him so madly that she'll bring him and Jack the saws they need to get out...Mel Gibson...is superb here.

And the post-hippie diction and the other surface flaws in Keaton's performance fade into relative insignificance, because the things that come from inside are so startlingly right...The movie builds an excitement that has something to do with the fact that the flight of the Biddles with Kate in tow is deranged.

Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, calling it "an anemic Bonnie and Clyde" and concluded that the performances were unconvincing.