Portrait of a Lady
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VHS Movie Reviews of Portrait of a Lady
Movie Review: Portrait of a Lady
Summary: 1 Stars
I loved this particular perfomance when I saw it on television and decided to purchase the DVD. The quality is so poor, so dark that the scenes are a dark mass with few details, especially the faces, dresses and room settings. I was very dissapointed. I am still waiting for my refund - an ongoing problem since Octoberirecrn@aol.com
Movie Review: I found this is greater than the novel
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Movie Review: More appropriation than adaptation
Summary: 3 Stars
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.Movie Review: poignant
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Movie Review: Beautiful film, though I disagree a little with the casting
Summary: 4 Stars
Its amazing that Jane Campion stays so faithful to the novel, and the movie is every bit as captivating as the book. The end differs slightly but the good thing is that Campion's ending is almost as ambiguous and open to interpretation as James's. This stylized film is wonderfully shot, with the colours, dresses and hairdos reflecting various good and bad times of Isabel's life. I thought Kidman is extraordinary as Archer because she captures a good deal of what James took so much pain to describe about Isabel - the nervousness, the quick wit and a sense of wonder about the future, and a slightly frigid attitude.
I wished Caspar Goodwood would be more animated and less brooding than Viggo Mortensen. Martin Donovan is good as Ralph, but I felt he hurried through some of his most important sentences (for e.g "I call people rich when .."). Also, when I read the book, I had imagined Osmond would be a lot less physical, though not less malicious, than Malkovich.
Its a great film overall, and it's sad that it didn't catch on as much as it should have. It was after all a very difficult story to film (much like the Bostonians) and I guess very few people liked it when it came out since the story always refrains from helping the reader/viewer. It is not like (say) Sense and Sensibility or Little Women where everything is happily resolved in the end.