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The Portrait of a Lady

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This adaptation of Henry James' technically innovative but infamously dense novel is interesting primarily because director Jane Campion seems to have entirely missed the point. She's mistaken Isabel Archer for a "romance addict" rather than the naive idealist James created. Perhaps aiming for wider appeal, she tries to turn this from the portrait of a unique female personality into a more general exploration of "women in love". Such universalizing might have worked if she and screenwriter Laura Jones had also had the wherewithal to change the story to suit their modified heroine. But having ditched the most critical aspect of the novel, they then remain reasonably faithful to its flow of events, with Isabel choosing an ugly, "sterile dilettante" (Malkovich) over a handsome lover and a rich English lord (Mortensen and Grant respectively) both of whom are infatuated with her. For Isabel the "naive idealist", such a choice is perfectly understandable. For Isabel the "romance addict", and women in general, such a choice beggars belief. So this not only fails as an adaptation, it fails as a convincing narrative in its own right. Screenwriting devotees might be drawn to it wondering just how Jones will convey Isabel's famous interiority without resorting to voiceover. The answer is simple: she ignores it in the writing (with the exception of one inspired fantasy sequence) and leaves most of it to performance. The result is that Kidman spends more than half the film in incomprehensible tears. The novel's Isabel cries once in 600 pages. For all that, this film is still not without reward: the performances from the near-ensemble cast are universally marvellous, the settings and costumes exquisite, and the music and cinematography are a perfect match for it all. There's no doubting Campion's skill as a director; I just doubt her interpretation of the source material.

Nicole Kidman IS Isabel Archer! I don't understand why some reviewers here panned her acting as bad. She has never looked more beautiful than in this film. Her acting is also superb and expressive.

This is the story about a young American woman (Isabel) who is just orphaned and is invited to stay with her rich relatives, the Touchetts in Victorian England. While in England, she is wooed by the rich Lord Warburton but she rejects his proposal because she wants to see the world and be free. When her uncle later dies, Isabel inherits a big sum of money and becomes truly rich and "independent". It is actually her cousin, the consumptive Ralph Touchett (who is secretly in love with her) who pressed his father to leave the money to Isabel without Isabel's knowledge. By this time, Isabel has met the scheming and mysterious Madame Merle (who plays Schubert on the piano most beautifully, I must add). M. Merle introduces Isabel to "her friend", Gilbert Osmond, a poor and widowed American staying in Italy who has a young daughter, Pansy. Both M. Merle and Osmond scheme to make Isabel marry Osmond so that he could have her money. Isabel innocently falls into their trap. Despite advice and dissuasions from her relatives, she eagerly marries Osmond and her life after that becomes a true nightmare. There is also a sub-plot involving Pansy's impossible love affair with Ned Rossum (played by Christian Bale).

The accompanying booklet of the DVD provides valuable information on the making of the film and the cast profile e.g. the fact that Jane Campion finds this to be her hardest project. From the movie, it is easy to see that she had put in tremendous effort to bring Henry James' classic to life. Every shot, every scene and every movement of the characters is carefully and beautifully directed and filmed. The colors are so rich, the seem to jump out of the screen! And oh, the gorgeous costumes - especially Isabel Archer's!

The casting is also perfect - notably, Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich who plays the villain, Osmond. Martin Donovan also embraces the difficult role of "Ralph Touchett" perfectly. My favourite scene is the one nearing the end involving a sobbing, heart-broken Isabel by the bedside of the dying Ralph. It is here that she realizes she loves him. This scene is so tender to watch. To me, this film showcases Nicole Kidman's best performance and it is THIS particular scene that clinches it.

I got my copy of the DVD from Amazon.co.uk. If you love period dramas, this is a worthy title to have in your collection. Get the original soundtrack too - the music is absolutely gorgeous and dreamy, and is a fond favourite of mine.

At about two and a half hours, Jane Campion tinkers at the bare threshold of monotony with this gorgeous period-piece, but she seldom falters in her ability to make her leading roles (The Piano, Sweetie) hypnotically compelling for all of their mulishness and tenacity.

Much has already been said about Malkovich and Kidman, both of whom I find were good if not superb, and Barbara Hershey, who brings just the right flavour of deviousness to her character. So I will focus instead on some common criticisms of this film.

Reviewers lament Campion's psychological simplifications of the theme, or her ungenerous treatment of Isabel as a sufferer of false consciousness who walks blindly into her own trap. On the contrary, I think the director is both adventurous and above-board in stating her revisionist projects from the very opening frame.

Henry James lived in the 1880s. His original work was intended as an exploration of what a woman might do if she were given independent means, and his story indicted women as being trapped by a weaker nature.

Exploring the same material Campion comes to a different, more ambiguous, but IMHO, also more interesting conclusion. She prefers to establish the film largely as Isabel's subjective experience, not as the story told by some omniscient narrator on whose shoulders falls the onus of proof. This is evidenced, for instance, by a sequence at the beginning where Isabel imagines making love with three different men at the same time.

For all its occasional flaws the film is at least internally consistent and proves to me yet again that Campion possesses cinematic imagination in spades. From her comes some of the boldest use of lighting and Black & White interludes I have seen in modern cinema.

Net net, don't let the negative reviews put you off, this is a very heart-warming experience even if a languorous one. Recommended rental for sure.

Henry James was realistic about women at the end of the 19th century, particularly those standing between the US and Great Britain. Isabel is such a woman. She gets into the world without any parents but with a tremendously good uncle and cousin. She is surrounded with men who love her and want to marry her out of love. She refuses them, three of them, to be able to see the world. And she falls in the hands of a social climber, a social parasite and a fortune hunter who covers up his liaison with the woman who introduced her to him, and whose daughter is the out-of-wedlock child of this very woman. She is of course deeply unhappy, alone, brutalized too, and yet she tries to save the daughter from her fate. She fails because the daughter is totally under the tyrannical authority of her father, an authority that is tyrannical only because the daughter accepts it and submits to it, particularly because of the teachings of some good Catholic nuns. Finally Isabel finds the energy to escape - for a while at least - from that husband when she learns his liaison and she can force him to accept. But she is so pent up in her stubborn decision that she can never step back and consider a real escape. Yet, maybe, at the end, there is a wavering touch of hope - for her. It is incredible how this woman, who wants to be strong-headed and independent, fails to see the men who love her and to recognize the man who uses her. As it is said in the film somewhere, Americans cannot become Europeans, and yet Isabel succeeds very well in becoming twisted and thwarted in Europe. Is that typically European ? Maybe. Nicole Kidman plays the role with style, delicacy, dainty and quaint nuances, but also with a tremendous amount of gusto, sentiment, feeling and emotion. She is probably ten times better than she had ever been, now she can measure herself with actors that are not stereotyped. Her freedom is probably the key to her present depth. Is the film a metaphor of her life ? Maybe. But who cares. What is important is that this Nicole Kidman is able to bring us such a marvellous masterpiece, though some of the « special effects » (strange camera angles and mirror effects) could have been avoided to reach a more intense purity.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

This movie was completely slagged off by US audiences, which just further illustrates the disaster that is American cinema. The Portrait of A Lady is brilliant film-making. It is a movie full of complex characters, divided emotions and intense drama. Most American's just don't get it. Campion's decision to begin the film in modern day with a series of women talking about love proves that not much has changed since Henry James wrote the classic novel on which the film is based. The film follows closely to James' story: Isabel Archer (Kidman in her finest role) comes to England to visit relatives and winds up inheriting a fortune. She falls under the spell of Madame Merle (Barbara Hershey deserved an Oscar)who introduces her to the sinister Gilbert Osmand (Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons mode)who simply wants her money and another beauty to add to his art collection. Isabel rejects a number of suitors in her quest to be an independent woman. She claims to her smitten cousin that she will never marry, but falls under the spell of Osmond. There are scenes of horror and heartbreak here, imaginative moments such as Isabel's "travelogue" through Europe as she begins to obsess over Osmond's entreaty that "I find myself absolutely in love with you." The supporting cast lead by Martin Donovan, Christian Bale, Shelly Winters, Shelly Duval and the priceless Mary-Louise Parker are superb. The much discussed final scene (which for some reason people don't understand) is a fabulous coda to this film. It mirrors an earlier scene when Isabel refused the proposal of Lord Warburton, and now finds herself in the same situation with her American suitor. Isabel runs toward the house, but rather than going inside, she turns back and the image freezes. Isabel is reconsidering the proposal of a man who truly loves her. What people don't like, obviously, is that we don't see her run back to his arms and tearfully say yes as the screen fades to black. We see Isabel caught in a moment of change and decision. This haunting final image is superb. Get a clue, people.

Splendiferous photography and state-of-the-art talent are throroughly wasted in this pretentious and often head-numbingly unexciting yet tediously overwrought rendition of a challenging novel. Did you like the first sentence of this review? If so, maybe YOU will like this movie. I was eager to see this film from the moment it came out. But this mauling of the James story was so dull that I was barely able to finish watching it. I just kept hoping it would get better. It didn't. Sometimes slow is good. But not in this case. Campion is too interested in creating a directorial aura to care about telling a story in an interesting manner.

In Jane Campion's version of Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady", many important elements of the novel are intact: the heroine's search for a life outside of society's strictures, the machinations of the 'villains' in the piece, the ambiguity of certain situations. However, from the start of the film, I found myself wondering what was going on: the mixture of color, b/w, 'old time' film styles was confusing and unnecessary to what is a period film with a strong enough narrative and point of view. Even the opening credits made no sense with the rest of the film, and were not tied to anything else. Nicole Kidman, Barbara Hershey, and John Malkovich are good, but other characters, such as Mary Louise Parker's Henrietta, make no sense if you haven't read the book. Some of the sequences felt edited to the extent of loss of continuity, and the transformation of Kidman's character into someone looking like Hershey's isn't mentioned, and no one seems to care that Kidman's hair miraculously changes color and texture the minute she is in England. Disconcerting. At least Campion took the abrupt and ambiguous ending seriously, although if you haven't read the book, it seems as if the film just ran out of ideas, not to mention steam. Points for the costumes and locations.

Jane Campion did an absolutely superb job in her 1993 Oscar-nominated film The Piano, which starred Holly Hunter as a mute woman sent to marry a man she's never met. That movie is for some reason one of my favorite of all time, despite the fact that I personally don't like romance movies or their equivalent, "chick flicks." After seeing this movie you tend to think there may be no such thing. Jane Campion has done another great film here, although not as good as the Piano, gets a pretty high mark on its own as a different, brilliant film.

Nicole Kidman stars as Henry James' headstrong character, Isabel Archer, an American woman who moves to England to live with her rich uncle (Sir John Gielgud) and aunt (Shelley Winters), while at this time in her life is desperate to find true love and marry. After her uncle dies, he leaves her a fortune in his will. Isabel, now being the rich woman she is, marries the monstrous Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich), who turns her life from pleasant to perhaps utter unhappiness, all at the hand of Madame Merle (Barbara Hershey--who was nominated for best supporting actress).

The movie surely plays as a "Dangerous Liaisons" from the victim's point of view, although the film is much more than that. For one, this movie is a lot better. Secondly, the villians are far more monstrous than revengeful, and finally this movie is just plain more interesting. A flaw in this movie is its slowness, although if you allow yourself to be intrigued by its plot and characters, this tends not to be a problem (at least it wasn't for me). It also depends on how educated you are to enjoy this film, and from my view, a person has to be somewhat to enjoy this movie in the slightest sense. Not to say I'm smarter than everybody else--I had to put the closed captioning on to read what the characters were saying to keep up with the plot.

Once again, Campion has scored and proven that yes, even a woman, can make a fantastic motion picture. I think people should give her more credit (not to mention she needs to make more movies) because her talent is truly one that should be noted. The DVD pretty much blows as you can tell if you read the techno-info, but a widescreen version of the film (a 2.35:1 non-anamorphic transfer) will at least let you see the movie in all its splendor.

Visually, I would rate this film five stars. And, I'm certain, that those reviewers who see past this film's flaws and award the film four or five stars are rewarding the stunning visuals. But, dramatically, its barely a three (and that's being generous), because, unfortunatley, it seems, that Campion is far more interested in period detail and far more fascinated with various costume choices and interior designs than she is in allowing her actual characters to do or say interesting things. No one in this film is alive. This is, in part, the theme of the film (and Henry James' fiction in general): everyone, in some way, is living a stifled life. But, it is a problem when the sets are infused with more color & life than the actual people. Mary-Louise Parker (whose eccentric bespectacled performance is the most memorable thing about this film) is perhaps the exception here; she breathes life into every scene she is in. But there isn't much air in these salon rooms and the characters just don't seem to connect to each other. This is especially true of Martin Donovan, who plays Isabel Archer's consumptive cousin and confidante, "Ralph Touchette". Donovan looks every bit the part (he looks like he just walked out of a Whistler or a Sargent) but we never feel that he really cares for Isabel nor she for him. The indigo and purple and green color palette that surrounds Donovan and co. is really striking but instead of expressively accenting character moods the colors seem only to highlight a lack. Director Campion does provide a few creative bursts which promise to break through the films subdued surfaces--I am thinking of the 2-3 anachronistically avant-garde fantasy sequences that momentarily threaten to artfully collapse the late-Victorian veneer-- but they are contained bursts that produce no real effects (in the audience or in the characters). Its as if Campion spent all her time figuring out what everyone and everything should look like and had no time left to infuse her still life with any energy or enthusiasm. The result is that the film feels, well, like a fin de siecle museum exhibit, which is unfortunate as this is supposed to be a film about an intelligent and sensual woman's coming to life!

To be fair, there are plenty of fine actors in this film (John Gielgud, Shelly Winters, Martin Donovan, Christian Bale, Viggo Mortensen, Richard Grant, Barbara Hershey, Mary Louise Parker) but the one character that matters most, and the one that is supposed to be the very embodiment of life, "Isabel Archer", is played by a strangely self-conscious and self-contained, Nicole Kidman. Kidman is beautiful and brilliant in her way and she wears her satin gowns exceptionally well, but she never succeeds in allowing us any access to what thoughts & passions drive one of the most complex female characters in fiction; and she never really connects with any of the other actors; its as if her panoply of emotions all come from some invisible source. The men in her life seem not to matter at all. The performance is solipsistic (and many of the performances in this film are just that). All we really get from Kidman is a youthful yearning & promise that then, all too quickly (after about one hour of cinema time), turns to a full-on pout once she falls for "Gilbert Osmond" played by the clownishly evil John Malkovich (this pout lasts for one hour and twenty minutes). Malkovich's performance seems to be a study in extremes as he veers between too-lazy-to-care dilettantism & manic misogyny. Malkovich has made a career out of playing bohemian burn-outs (Dangerous Liasons, Sheltering Sky...) but this one is so detestable that it borders on self-caricature. Barbara Hershey, as Osmond's accomplice "Serena", fairs slightly better. Taken alone each actor seems perfectly suited to play their roles, but somehow the characters just don't materialize; the actors take turns having their big moments but these moments just don't seem to add up to anything that we care to count. The characters never really matter to us, the magnitude of their emotions seem unconvincing, and so this Jamesian plot just seems trifling.

I think Campion very much wants this film to be an emblematic film about all free-thinking woman on the cusp of life (and the opening credits that roll while various young women of all races look on seems to be a testament to this), but since she fails to give us a sense of Isabel Archer's deep longing for free choice and danger, we fail to feel the tragedy of her dream of endless options being thwarted and her dream of danger, ironically, coming true.

Campion's film of James' complex and difficult novel is a strong achievement despite a strained prologue. Though I find the book ultimately more satisfying, particularly the ending is made more justifiable in the book, it is a work to be cherished. I'd like to expound on the ending. What the film doesn't make quite clear enough is that James' Isabel is afraid of intimacy, of closeness to men. This causes her to flee from the true admiration of Casper Goodwood. In the film, however, Isabel is made into more of a masochist, willingly going into a tortuous relationship with Osmond to get hurt. The novel simply has a different outlook. It suggests that Isabel was manipulated my Merle and Osmond and was simply too idealistic. At any rate, Campion's change does work because like all great works of art, it is open to interpretation. While I personally feel the novel's vision makes more sense relating to the time period, Campion's is a unique and provoking idea. Similarly, I don't believe this change is more "feminist". I actually think the book is more truly feminist, but the film still works. The ravishing performances of Kidman, Malkovich, and especially Barbara Hershey are great to watch. Campion's direction here is near-flawless, ranking with her work on An Angel at My Table and The Piano. The production design is rich and powerful, and the music is harmonious. My only slight reservation, as I mentioned, was the cutesy prologue, which doesn't really belong in the film. Still, I admire Campion's attempt to point out the essential sameness of the battle between the sexes across different generations. Stylistically, the film is splendid and full of memorable visual moments, particularly Isabel's travelouge and the final haunting image, which, coincidentally (?) invokes the ending of "The Piano" in which Ada drifts below the surface of the water, grasping her destiny for the remainder of her life.