As for the dichotomy between Lady Sylvia and the Trent girls, it may not be as great as one thinks. Using the men in the film as a standard.

Lady Sylvia
extremely sexually aggressive=Yes
smarter=Maybe so, but only marginally smarter than
Angus.
wealthier=unless she has something stashed away,
which we do not see, Lord James seems to
be wealthier.
more powerful=Maybe so, but what good does this do
her, when even someone like Kevin
can get the better of her. “Let us
have some music.” she says. He
misunderstands her, picks up his
mouth organ, and causes her to
dance strangely.

Trent girls
inexperienced Eve=Yes. Mary=No.
sexually passive=I take this to mean that Eve
let someone else make the
decision for her. But in
1988, she chooses not to
take a husband, and in
286, she chooses not to
take a husband, by
entering a convent. Not
that it does her much
good.
subservient intellectually=Yes, as they
do not enter
the men’s
talks.
subservient financially=No. Indeed,
when their parents disappeared, and they
could have taken a man in to help them
run the B&B, Mary, both figuratively and
literally, puts on the pants in the
family, so they would not be
subservient financially to a man or men.

I agree. That is not exactly the message we should be sending to our daughters, but I would add, it is also a message we should be sending to our sons.

It may seem that I am disagreeing with you, but I am not, at least, on the major points you made. For, as you say, it is hard to tell where the film is at any time. For, as Richard Harrington, the film critic for the “Washington Post” points out, in the film, we have conflicts between . . .

ernest and decadent
paganism and Christianity
surreal and real
violent and bucolic

And to that, I would add the following conflicts, as well.

brains and brawn
comedy and seriousness
horror and spoof
masculine and feminine
sexual license and sexual restraint
Thatcherism and non-Thatcherism
The upper class and the middle and lower classes
and not only female and female, but also female and male. Indeed, unlike most films, most of the physical confrontations in the films are between the women and the men in the film.

And anyway, you have given me something to think about. And for that, I thank you.

figurativ

But the dichotomy is SO over the top that it’s hard to take seriously. It’s not like Lady Sylvia just turns out to be a bitch, or even that she’s just evil. She’s not just “emasculating” because she’s a powerful woman, she bites a guy on the penis. She’s not just “unfeminine” because she’s confident and sexually aggressive, she’s unfeminine because she carries around a giant spiked phallus. And like I said, I more or less ended up rooting for Lady Sylvia anyway, because Donohoe’s performance is so strong. So it’s hard to say where the movie’s heart is. I kind of tend to give the film the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not %100 sure.

Ah, poor Kev. He does get a pretty raw deal!

An interesting statement. At first glance, I have never thought of this. On second glance, I think you might be right. Would you care to expound on your statement, including your definitions of “sexist” and “sexism?”

As for my thoughts . . .

One, while most of the film characters, who express sexist comments, are male, here we have a female character, who expresses sexist comments.

Two, Ken Russell may be an equal opportunity sexist, as the men in the flm are treated as badly as the females in the film, if not worst.

Angus (Peter Capaldi)
Slapped with a dead animal. Bitten. Dragged down the hall. Thrown down a flight of stairs. And vampirized.

Erny (Paul Brooke)
Lured into her web of evil and vampirized, which leads to her death.

Joe (Christopher Gable)
We can presume that he met a most foul death during the past year.

Peters (Stratford Johns)
Bitten on the face and thrown off the balcony to his death.

Kevin (Chris Pitt)
And poor little Kev. Has any teenage boy scout ever being more harshly treated at the hands of a woman. Just when he thinks he’s going to make it with the hottest woman he has ever seen and receiving his first taste of oral sex from a woman, he is bitten on the penis by this woman. Paralyzed. Has his body ordor and breath insulted. And then drowned in the tub, when the doorbell rings.

James (Hugh Grant)
He is the only male in the film, who is not badly treated, but after the end of the film, he is most likely attacked by Angus and vampirized.

I would also add that the scene between Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) and Kevin is somewhat similiar to an earlier scene in “Horror Hotel” with Christopher Lee.

Here it is: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0339288/