The Portrait of a Lady

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as I was hoping
Review: "A Portrait of a Lady" is a really FINE novel, about a headstrong American heiress who might have married anyone she wanted, and chose the absolute worst man possible. Like I thought of the recent film "The End of the Affair", everyone would be better served by reading the excellent novel and just leaving it at that.

This movie could have been great, like the novel is, except for a tremendously fatal flaw made in the casting. John Malkovich plays Gilbert Osmond, the fellow Isabel (Nicole Kidman) completely misreads and marries. I found him entirely wrong for the part. When I read the novel years ago, I cast my own movie version in my mind, as I'm sure many may do to help visualize what's being played out. Osmond is a ritualist, a sensualist, but a sensualist without love. He may have passion, but there would be no tenderness. He constantly compares himself to the pope, as he like the pontiff lives in Rome. Well, the actor who came to mind then, and still did when I re-read the book ages later, is Orson Welles, as he was in "The Third Man". It has to be someone who as I say is somewhat sensuous looking. And Welles was that, with his thick lips and satiated eyes. Malkovich? No, no way. Why would she ever have thought him attractive? He was always creepy; there wasn't anything to misinterpret. Bad casting, pure and simple.

Rating:
Summary: The most boring film I've seen in months
Review: Although Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich have a superb performance in this film (that's where my 2 stars go) I almost got asleep watching it. None of my friends who watched the film could stay awake. It just drags on forever. I imagine all films based on a Henry James novel have the same weakness. I guess one has to have a developed taste for such films.

Rating:
Summary: SOMEWHAT SPLAYED-OUT BUT GORGEOUS RETELLING OF THE CLASSIC
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: I found this is greater than the novel
Review: At first, I read the novel. I though I couldn't understand heroine's decisions. Isabel is a stubborn woman and is not clever. Her behavoir is strenge for me. I wondered why Henry James wrote her as incomprehensible woman.
But when I watched the movie, I could see her anothe angles. She has a strong will that never overcame by enyone . As a woman , she didn't run away from her choice and duty. Inculding me , any woman give up and reconcile anothe man who make advances(doubtful, I don't like man in this novel) herself.

John Malkovich( played Gilert Osmond) is very very great! He acted very mysterious man . Nicole Kidman is very beatifulc.
I think this film is highered by actors. I don't like Osmond in the novel but I like Osmond in the film. It make us contemplate.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating and Unusual
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Love and Freedom don't go together
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: One can be independent and still not be free!
Review: I absolutely adore this movie, soundtrack, and book. There are a few discrepancies with all three, however. The actual composer referred to in the book is Beethoven, but in the movie they use Schubert. The three pieces of music by Schubert were still exquisite in capturing the emotions of the movie itself. The soundtrack for this film is equally as moving as the book and movie. It is perhaps one of my favorite Cd's and I cannot go one day without listening to it at least once. The prologue, I found to be thoughtful and beautiful. It showed the beauty of women with all it's different faces and forms. It showed women just being women. It was the director's way of adding her own signature to a wondrous classic. I must say Ralph Touchett was my favorite character, because he truly wanted to see Isabel succeed and do everything her heart desired. Isabel's return to Gardencourt, to spend time with her cousin before he dies, is the most haunting scene in this adaptation. To summarize this movie/book. Freedom comes when one has enough money to gratify their imaginations. Or does it?

Rating:
Summary: flux and paradigms
Review: i first read henry james' great novel when i was a teenager. i remember being fascinated by the astounding complexity of his characters -- how every one of them seemed to mask his or her own hidden agendas beneath layers and layers of "proper" social veneers.

the Isabel Archer in the beginning of the novel was an outsider, fresh from america, who single-handedly breathed a new life into the stale surroundings of these rigid european social constructs. she was an ephemeral presence, a beam of light around whom both men and women hovered and wished to take something from. the main dilemma that the novel posed was how this young, somewhat naive outsider could hold true to her dreams of bettering herself within a sophisticated european community without compromising her free-spirited nature and selling herself short. simply put, the novel was about a woman who was in a constant state of flux -- involved in a precarious juggling act involving her own aspirations and those of the people who claimed to love her.

with her "controversial" ending to the film version, i believe that jane campion has brilliantly dramatized this state of flux, for in this scene, we see our heroine, once again, fleeing from her options (which are presented to her throughout the film in the form of aggressive male suitors and their various promises) rather than confronting them; but this time, as she rushes away from Caspar Goodwood's embrace in the icy yard and toward the warmth and security of Gardencourt, we see her suddenly stop at the threshold of the home and turn her gaze back toward the yard, back toward Caspar Goodwood. and the frame freezes and fades to black.

critics of this scene are disappointed that campion chooses not to reveal, as James does in the novel, that Isabel leaves for Rome the very next day, thereby implying that she has decided to go back to Osmond and reject Goodwood yet again. however, i believe that drawing this sort of implication would be a far too literal and surface-level reading of the text. in the novel, Henrietta is the one who reveals to Goodwood that Isabel has left for Rome. Goodwood is stunned and is turning away when Henrietta grabs him and tells him to wait a moment. and then the novel ends. James seems to suggest that Henrietta will reveal to Goodwood -- who, like the readers at this point, is shocked at the thought that Isabel may actually go back to Osmond -- the true nature of Isabel's intentions. for me, the implication of all of this is that Isabel will return to Rome because it is her duty to confront Osmond, if only to tell him that she is leaving him. indeed, james devotes some time earlier in the final chapter to expounding about Isabel's inner dilemma over remaining true to her obligations.

of course, this is only my reading of the text, but i believe that this reading helps elucidate campion's decision to end the film the way she does. for although, in the film, Isabel does turn at the threshold of the house to look back towards Goodwood, you will notice that her hand is still firmly on the door handle. she MUST open the door and enter the house and leave for Rome the next day because campion would not stray so far from the text as to betray the facts of the novel (which happens to be a work of literature that she reveres). by ending the film on this moment, campion is at once able to stay true to the facts of the text while dramatizing, in essence, what the whole film has been about: the precarious nature of an independent-natured woman's destiny in a world that aggressively forces her to choose between various life "options" that are really nothing more than thinly veiled, socially accepted constructs. just as the ending of the film is uncertain and ambiguous, campion suggests that so too was the future of a woman who dared to stray from the social conventions of that time.

as an astonishing counterpoint to the women of Isabel's time, campion opens the film with an inspired segment in which we see a diverse range of young women looking attentively into the camera; some are sitting gracefully, others are dancing, some are dark skinned, others light, some have short hair, others long, and all are either smiling or looking content. earlier, we hear them discussing the impact of a kiss and the dreamy, romanticized attentions of a lover. campion suggests that these women are, in essence, the descendants and beneficiaries of Isabel Archer's earlier struggles to maintain her own identity within a socio-cultural paradigm that wished only to devour it. for these contemporary women, the nature of love and romance is a topic that is to be discussed in leisure and with fondness, not a crushing matter that could determine the course of their lives. THAT, campion suggests, is Isabel Archer's gift to them.

Rating:
Summary: poignant
Review: I love "period dramas" and I am not sure if I am a good judge of a movie because I tend to love all "period dramas" so I will always praise them.

What makes this movie so special is the way it is photographed. Just the scenery does the speaking.

Rating:
Summary: MIXED UP SCENE SEQUENCES
Review: I love Henry James' works. "Portrait . . ." is my favorite novel. I've read the book twice. However, Director Campion must not know the story line very well, because some scene sequences are reversed, which detract greatly from the impact of the story unfolding. Campion must not have picked up on these "errors" because they are not flashbacks. They are too close in the sequencing. For example: In the beginning Isabel arrives at her uncle's London Manor and then the next scenario is of her still in America packing. Also late in the film/book (when the secret of Osmond's daughter is about to be made known) there is an error. In the book Isabel first visits Osmond's daughter at the convent and meets Madame Merle also visiting and wonders why. Later the housekeeper tells her Madame Merle is the mother and it all becomes clear to Isabel and the reader. In the film Isabel is told first that Madame Merle is the girl's mother and then she visits the daughter at the convent and finds Madame Merle, which is anticlimactic. Also in the book the heroine's rejection of Caspar Goodwood is much earlier. These switches in sequencing appear to be gross errors and detract alot from the film for people who know the story well. I had my heart set on it being "perfect!!"