Rating: 
Summary: Less Than Truth Can Be Beautiful
Review: A beautiful movie, its rich atmosphere almost makes it a period piece of Paris in the early 30s. One must be somewhat familiar with Nin's diaries to pick up on the signifance of some of the details. Much is left understated. Gorgeous soundtrack featuring popular of the time period and classical, including a rare, early version of Josephine Baker's "J'ai Deux Amours" that's much superior to the 50s version. Personally, I feel that the film "Hollywood-izes" the personas of Nin and Miller, making them too amiable. The rough edges of true personality and character that enabled their geniuses are absent in the movie. Brilliance is sometimes unsightly, and, therefore, excluded from the movie. Still, an entertaining, enjoyable, and erotic experience that comes highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Very stylish film
Review: A very good looking film, with good acting. Unfortunately the movie loses momentum in the middle and never regains it. If you're familiar with Anais Nin and this period of her life, you'll enjoy the film a lot more. Kaufman really doesn't succeed in letting us get to know the characters very well. Frankly I thought the sexual scenes, which got the movie it's NC17 rating, could have been left out without any damage to the film. If you're expecting a film mainly about sex, you'll be disappointed. It may be more style than substance, but it's done well enough that it's enjoyable. Kaufman creates a lovely vision of Paris in the '30s, and as mention, the acting is top notch.
Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly Beautiful
Review: An exquisite look at the lives of two literary geniuses. Their work and their love for each other was one. Some of the most tender and passionate love scenes I have seen from a male actor (Fred Ward). His gruff nature on one side, but his sensitive passion on the other side. The cinematography in these scenes was superior. Simple sensuality.
Rating:
Summary: Not for all tastes...unless...
Review: As a writer I was pleased with the emotions and inner feelings presented by the characters involved yet it made me wonder...why did all the great writers have such painful sexual lives? The NC-17 rating is enough to scare some people away...
Rating: 
Summary: HENRY MILLER ACCORDING TO ANAIS NIN
Review: At least two movies of Philip Kaufman will stay in movie history, THE RIGHT STUFF and HENRY & JUNE. Produced by Philip Kaufman's son, co-written with his wife Rose Kaufman, HENRY & JUNE is a family affair. One could say that it is a european movie filmed in an american manner. Don't get me wrong, it's a compliment ! Fred Ward as Henry Miller, portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros as Anais Nin and Uma Thurman as the woman inspiring the two writers, Richard E. Grant and Kevin Spacey in smaller parts, the whole cast gives a superb performance. Don't expect pornographic scenes in HENRY & JUNE, sex is more suggested than showed. Philip Kaufman is interested in the relation between Henry and Anais and doesn't follow Henry Miller in his multiple adventures in Paris' brothels. Henry Miller lives in a Paris that Federico Fellini could have created : enjoy this carnaval full of fellinian faces or Henry Miller's neighbors (you can recognize among them french clown Pierre Etaix in one of his last performances). Philip Kaufman has recreated the Paris which was the center of such movies as Marcel Carné's LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS or LE JOUR SE LEVE. Poetic realism was the name of this french movement of the 1935-1945 period. Average extra-features but over the top audio and video transfers. A DVD for your library.
Rating:
Summary: HENRY MILLER ACCORDING TO ANAIS NIN
Review: At least two movies of Philip Kaufman will stay in movie history, THE RIGHT STUFF and HENRY & JUNE. Produced by Philip Kaufman's son, co-written with his wife Rose Kaufman, HENRY & JUNE is a family affair. One could say that it is a european movie filmed in an american manner. Don't get me wrong, it's a compliment ! Fred Ward as Henry Miller, portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros as Anais Nin and Uma Thurman as the woman inspiring the two writers, Richard E. Grant and Kevin Spacey in smaller parts, the whole cast gives a superb performance. Don't expect pornographic scenes in HENRY & JUNE, sex is more suggested than showed. Philip Kaufman is interested in the relation between Henry and Anais and doesn't follow Henry Miller in his multiple adventures in Paris' brothels. Henry Miller lives in a Paris that Federico Fellini could have created : enjoy this carnaval full of fellinian faces or Henry Miller's neighbors (you can recognize among them french clown Pierre Etaix in one of his last performances). Philip Kaufman has recreated the Paris which was the center of such movies as Marcel Carné's LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS or LE JOUR SE LEVE. Poetic realism was the name of this french movement of the 1935-1945 period. Average extra-features but over the top audio and video transfers. A DVD for your library.
Rating: 
Summary: As interesting as reading Henry Miller.
Review: For all its notoriously explicit subject matter - the story of an affair between two famous writers on sexuality, Anais Nin and Henry Miller, the film features many heterosexual and lesbian couplings, mini-orgies, screenings of period pornography, scenes in bordellos etc. - 'Henry And June' doesn't further the Hollywood biopic beyond the reductive absurdities of the 1930s and 40s. Throughout, the film's grinding (DEFINITELY no pun intended) and endless 130 minutes, I was irresistably reminded of the mythically silly Curtis Bernhardt film about the Brontes, 'Devotion' (1946), which featured the classic exchange: 'Hello, Dickens'; 'Hello, Thackeray'. Kaufman's film groans with moments like these, not just in the introduction of characters - 'This is my friend, the writer Henry Miller...he'll never be published' - but in the way locals greet the bohemian leads ('Bonjour, Mussyuur Meelur' 'Sah vah?'); the way intellectual discussion is reduced to crass platitudes; the telegraphed reminders of cultural or historical signposts (a screening of 'L'Age D'Or' with mild heckling; Hitler bleating on the radio); the dopey use of literal montage (Nin and Miller making love while a pot bubbles, or Hugo plucks the guitar). Anais Nin was arguably the first major writer to ask for writing, especially writing about sex, to be written for and by women, from a woman's point of view and experience, rather than having to make do with the usual hand-me-down male fantasies.
The film tries to show this gap between male and female ways of looking, not only by setting up spectacles in which we concentrate on the voyeurs of each sex, and the different way they react to what they see; but in offering two paralell, gendered narratives. The male story centres on Miller's attempt to write 'Tropic Of Cancer': it is a masculine, linear narrative, which starts with Henry as a hopeless, uncomprehending boor, and ends with the completed manuscript - in other words, a closed narrative leading to quantifiable achievement. Nin's female narrative is more concerned with savouring and analysing every moment, mixing fantasy, dream and reality - although this narrative supposedly charts her development from curious, child-like bourgeois to sexually experienced woman, Nin teaches Miller more than he can ever give her. This difference is shown in the film by the way her major writing is her Journal, open, unplanned, plotless, a work that can only end with her death. The major problem is that Kaufman doesn't dramatise this opposition. He is only concerned with creating atmosphere, a bogus image of a non-existent France in which amiable peasants play musette, do magic tricks and loiter in the streets; in which orgiastic carnivals drum through the night, and brothels cater to every taste. There is no sense of the deep divisions at the time in France between Right and Left that would lead to the trauma of the Occupation - the protest at the Bunuel film is easily laughed down, whereas in real life it was subjected to fascist vandalism; the policemen are so amiable as to allow themslves be swallowed by the bohemian fun. There is no attempt to account, for example for what it might be truly like to be a prostitute in such a milieu, shorn of the fantasy - these girls have no life beyond their professional duties. The vapid decor and soft-focus cinematography smothers everything in a smooth glow that makes a delapidated tenement as salubrious as a rich banker's mansion. And isn't it a bit off that Nin, one of the leading feminist thinkers of the 20th century, is redcued to being a bad poet of the erotic, and a simperingly infantile one at that (there is little mention of how poor and monotonous a writer Miller truly was - June mockingly compares him to Dostoevsky, but Thurman's performance is so lamentable it doesn't count as a critique). What really exposes this film as a sham is its unimaginative treatment of sexuality - in lingering over naked female flesh, and especially in the soft-porn sapphic grappling, the film ignores Nin's plea and addresses itself to male voyeurs the world over.
Rating:
Summary: Henry and June
Review: Henry Miller, the author of "The Tropic of Cancer," was a very interesting man to say the least. Having only read that book, I have developed somewhat of an understanding of his persona. This has been a favorite of mine since it's release. It is very intimate look into the relationship between Anais Nin, Henry Miller and his wife June. It is a very sexual movie, not meant for the easily offended. The women are beautiful and Henry as masculine and rugged as his reputation suggested. The film is a masterpiece, the acting outstanding, and the cinematography absolutely beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: Henry and June
Review: Henry Miller, the author of "The Tropic of Cancer," was a very interesting man to say the least. Having only read that book, I have developed somewhat of an understanding of his persona. This has been a favorite of mine since it's release. It is very intimate look into the relationship between Anais Nin, Henry Miller and his wife June. It is a very sexual movie, not meant for the easily offended. The women are beautiful and Henry as masculine and rugged as his reputation suggested. The film is a masterpiece, the acting outstanding, and the cinematography absolutely beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: My fav video of all time!
Review: I completly fell in love with this movie! Seeing it was about my fav write (Anais Nin) I had to see it. I had really high hopes for it too. And it lived up to it and beyond. I loved the lush cinmaetography. And not to mention the acting and drama depth completely blew my away. I had doubts about the actors and actresses living up to there roll, but believe me they did. I couldnt think of a better group of actors/actresses to play and look the roll of Anais Nin, June Miller, and Henry Miller, the main characters. Anais Nin is played by Maria de Medeiros who is intruduced to Henry Miller, played by Fred Ward, by her husband. At first it seems like a harmless friendship but grows into much more when Henry's wife is intruduced, June Miller, played by Uma Thurman, who completely fascinates Anais. Anais and June then begain there friendship, which looks like it will turn out to be more. While June who is addtioned for a job in New york, Anais and Henry start a relationship, and also gives Anais her 2nd awakening. Over all ,yes im going to have to say it, This movie ruled! Highly recomended.
|
