Portrait of a Lady
by Jane Campion
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Barbara Hershey, John Malkovich, Martin Donovan (II), Mary-Louise Parker, Nicole KidmanDirector: Jane Campion
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog; Italian (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 144 minutes
Release Date: 1997-11-18
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: Polygram USA Video
Studio: Polygram USA Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Portrait of a Lady
Movie Review: The film, like Isabel Archer, is bursting with promise unfulfilled
Summary: 3 Stars
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.
Summary of Portrait of a Lady
Leave it to New Zealand director Jane Campion (The Piano, Angel at My Table) to begin an adaptation of Henry James's great novel (set in the late 1800s) with a group of late-20th-century women from Down Under talking about the importance of a kiss. Like any good film adaptation (and it's a very good one, indeed), this exquisitely framed and mounted Portrait of a Lady is at least as much Campion as it is James. The story of strong-willed, independent-minded Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman, whose skin here is photographed like delicate porcelain) is a tricky one to dramatize, since it's largely about good intentions going awry, roads not taken, misguided decisions made for good reasons. Headstrong American orphan Isabel rejects the proposal of a decent, sensible English suitor, Lord Warburton (Richard E. Grant), because she wants to find her own destiny and identity first. Instead, she is seduced by Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich), an effete collector of art (and women) whom one character describes as a "sterile dilettante." How Isabel's life, and the lives of those who love her, are affected by this fateful (but irreversible?) decision is what the bulk of the film is about. Portrait of a Lady is lovely, heartbreaking, and at times terrifying--as only coming face-to-face with the consequences of one's own life-changing decisions can be. Gorgeously photographed in anamorphic widescreen format. --Jim EmersonDrama VHS Video
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