Portrait of a Lady
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VHS Movie Reviews of Portrait of a Lady
Movie Review: Not for Low-Brows
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of my all-time favorite movies for various reasons but the top three reasons are Jane Campion, Nicole Kidman and Barbara Hershey. Jane Campion has taken this amazing book and found a way to convey an array emotions in a stunning visual manner. I scoffed at Nicole Kidman until I saw her in To Die For and then I saw this film and became a loyal follower. I don't care how bad the movie is, she is always worth watching. And anyone who isn't completely moved by Barbara Hershey trying to maintain composure while speaking to the back of someone who obviously is trying shun her should check their pulse. It is one of the most heartbreaking moments in acting I have ever seen. The cinematography is seductive and the music is trance inducing. Gorgeous costumes and amazing performances from everyone involved. Quite frankly a perfect film. If we're lucky there will be a Criterion version of this film with director's commentary someday. Movie Review: garbage
Summary: 1 Stars
one of the worst movies i've ever seen. long, boring, and tiring. the acting on all counts was terrible and unconvincing and john malkovich can't his way out of a wet paper bag. save your money.Movie Review: Beautiful!
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Movie Review: Very Boring!
Summary: 2 Stars
The movie is beautiful to look at but the story is so boring and weird, doesn't make much sence.Movie Review: Love and Freedom don't go together
Summary: 5 Stars
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