what went wrong

this? made me LAUGH! :-)

a wife murdering nutter

That wasn't all that went wrong with the film. Basically, the internal dialog which was so important as to the motivations of Stella and just about everyone, was completely ignored by the director, and it caused this movie to be hollow and flat. Even the sex scenes were not what they were in the book, because character development was at a minimum.
UPCOMING SPOILER








One of the biggest oversights in this movie was the death of Stella's son, eventually leading to Stella's death.In the book, it is explained that Stella was in her own world so to speak after Edgar's capture, and she eventually had to say goodbye to him as she knew she would never see him again. She envisions her son as Edgar and allows him to drown (symbolically saying goodbye).
The film NEVER even touches on this crucial issue, or even tries.

Also, we learn in the film that she had no intentions of marrying Peter, she knew all along she would commit suicide. The film didnt even try to explain this either, in essence blaming Peter's lie that Edgar didnt want to come to the ball as the reason for her despondency and death.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOO shame on you director!!!! You have to do better than that with the story, or give us more sex!!!!!!!!!!!

It felt like a lot of the scenes in the first 30 minutes or so were cut midway through and not given enough time to develop.