movie review by Susan Granger, www.susangranger.com

Rating: FRESH

The most romantic film of the summer, it's an opulent courtship saga that spans the centuries.

Susan Granger's review of "Possession" (USA Films release)

The most romantic film of the summer, "Possession" tells a tale of two couples, separated by time yet bound together by a literary mystery. Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) is an American scholar in England on a fellowship to study the life and work of Victorian poet laureate Randolph Henry Ash. When he discovers unfinished love letters, he makes a theoretical connection between Ash (Jeremy Northam), who was married, and poetess Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). His bold assertion piques the curiosity of an icy British scholar, Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), who has been researching LaMotte and her lesbian companion (Lena Headley). Flashbacks of the secretive Ash/LaMotte liaison are intercut with the growing attraction between Mitchell and Bailey as they doggedly pursue their determined detective work, unearthing a surprising cache of impassioned missives and exploring their chaotic emotional archeology. Seemingly effortlessly, Aaron Eckhart wraps around his character and few actresses do repression better than Gwyneth Paltrow, while Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle are convincing. Adapted by David Henry Hwang, Laura Jones and director Neil LaBute from A.S. Byatt's 1990 Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, it's a deliberate diversion from the darkly comic cynicism of LaBute's previous work ("Nurse Betty," "In the Company of Men," "Your Friends and Neighbors") - and curiously reminiscent of the lyrical "Somewhere In Time." The dialogue, in particular, is seductive, evoking a true appreciation for the language of love. (For the curious: both Ash and LaMotte are fictional characters who never really wrote poetry.) On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Possession" is a sensitive, sincere 7, an opulent courtship saga that spans the centuries.

TV Guide Online

POSSESSION

Neil LaBute, 2002

Our rating: ** [2 out of 5 stars]

Eminent Victorians

A.S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel Possession is a heady mix of poetry, love letters, fairy tales, diary pages, and bits of criticism and theory -- purely literary stuff that's always the first to go whenever a book is adapted for the screen. Unfortunately, as this thin and entirely ill-conceived adaptation from director Neil LaBute demonstrates, that stuff happens to be the lifeblood of Byatt's wonderful book. Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is a scruffy American student of Victorian poetry toiling at the British Museum as a research assistant to Professor Blackadder (Tom Hickey), one of the leading authorities on the 19th-century English poet Randolph Henry Ash. One afternoon while leafing through one of Ash's Latin texts in the London Library, Roland makes a fascinating discovery: two drafts of what appear to be love letters written by Ash to a woman whom Roland soon deduces to be the Victorian poet Christabel LaMotte. Proving that the two poets even knew each other would be an important enough contribution to Ash scholarship; confirming that the very married Ash carried on a secret affair with LaMotte -- who, feminist critics have been quick to claim, was gay -- would occasion a fundamental rethinking of both writers, and make Roland's career. Behaving more like a scandal-monger than an academic, Roland nicks the letters and takes them to chilly gender studies scholar Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), an expert on LaMotte who also happens to be a distant relation. Intrigued, Maud defrosts enough to suggest a trip to Seal Hall, the crumbling estate where LaMotte lived out the last 20 years of her life, and there Maud and Roland make an even more momentous discovery: two piles of carefully hidden letters -- the correspondence between Christabel LaMotte and her lover, Randolph Henry Ash. As Maud and Roland attempt to reconstruct their clandestine affair by retracing the lovers' paths across Britain and France, the film flashes back to the 19th century to find Ash (Jeremy Northam) and LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle) mooning about Victorian England, overcoming their scruples and finally declaring their love. Our scholars inevitably follow suit. Aside from providing further evidence of just what unhappiness male-female relationships can lead to, it's hard to see what attracted the writer-director of YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS to Byatt's book. It's a bad fit all around. Paltrow tries to get into the swing of things, but she's too young and Maud comes off as immature. Eckhart is even less persuasive. Gruff and unshaven, he crashes through it all like Indiana Jones with something to prove: Poesy ain't for pansies.

--Ken Fox

Possession (2002)

movie review by Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Taming of the shrewd

Possession

Grade: C+

BY PHILIP MARTIN
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE

Neil LaBute has heretofore been considered more of a writer than a director; though his work in the underrated Nurse Betty (directed from a script by John C. Richards and James Flamberg) hinted at a burgeoning cinematic intelligence, what was most notable and immediately apprehensible about In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors was a sharp and nasty verbal wit. (The same might be said about his plays, Bash and The Shape of Things.) LaBute's characters may not has been horrible people but they were certainly capable of saying and doing horrible things to each other.

And so LaBute has earned a reputation for misanthropy -- or, as it is usually put, "misogyny." The latter charge is curious, since the women in his work usually get off better than the men. LaBute seemed to take a rather Hobbesian view of human nature, but it was only his characters who seemed to have problems with the fairer sex.

Anyway, it's probably more than a coincidence that one of the characters in LaBute's latest film Possession is a 19th-century poet who is similarly perceived. One of the academics investigating the life and travails of the Robert Browning-esque Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) describes the subject as "a softcore misogynist."

Perhaps surprisingly, given this is a a LaBute film, it turns out the man was no such thing; our intrepid academics discover he carried on a passionate yet covert affair with a "poetess" named Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), who bears a passing resemblance to the real-life Christina Rossetti.

It seems a curious match between director and material -- Possession, as you may know, is the movie version of A.S. Byatt's much-beloved, Booker Prize-winning novel of the same title. Those familiar with the book might doubt that the book's exquisite textural details -- chief among them the faux 19th-century love letters and poems Byatt wrote for her characters -- would translate to the big wall of light. For the most part they don't, leaving us with a rather ordinary story of parallel romances working themselves out and eventually twining together.

In the end, it's a rather sweet and dull movie. Oddly enough, the literate LaBute handles this potentially rich material with the kind of heedlessness for language we might expect from someone like Michael Bay -- we get some nice visual flourishes and a throatful of honey-lit England along with some utterly awful dialogue which this reader doesn't remember from the book.

(Full disclosure: I didn't re-read the novel to prepare for this review. And since Byatt isn't among the three screenwriters credited on the film while LaBute is, I'm going to assume the soon-to-be infamous line about possibly finding "an 'us' in 'me and you'" wasn't in the novel.)

There's another major problem -- while LaBute gets the cutthroat competitive academic world at least half-right (it seems the smaller the stakes the more vindictive the scholarly vitriol) he oversimplifies the dynamic between the glam feminist LaMotte scholar Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) and the striving research assistant Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) by converting Michell from a lower-class Brit to the ugliest kind of American -- a spoiled kleptomaniac who would seem to be more at home on the set of The Fast and the Furious than rooting through the rare papers stacks in the British Museum.

While it might be argued that LaBute's film gives a rather more sympathetic view of Americans than Byatt's novel -- she makes both of the grave-robbing philistines racing to beat Maud and Roland to Ash's buried secrets American; in the movie it's a Yank and an upper-class public school twit -- but some us are likely to have a difficult time finding Roland worthy of our empathy. He's a punk and a criminal -- he doesn't even seem desperate.

On the other hand, we're told he looks great. Starved and unshaven, he's transformed himself from a lunkified Everyguy to a reasonable facsimile of a Hollywood movie star. His dark eyes glint deep in his head -- head to head in bed, his teeth rival Gwyneth's in gleamy luster.

Eckhart isn't bad, given what he's called upon to do, and neither is Paltrow -- though her playing Maud as a Brit is mildly annoying -- but the total effect is rather depressing. A fine novel has been reduced to pretty but empty soap opera. Eckhart is widely viewed as LaBute's alter ego -- he's in all his films -- and while analysis is probably too pat, it is interesting that the mainstreaming of Eckhart seems to have coincided with the gentrification -- the taming, if you will -- of Neil LaBute.

Greenwich Village Gazette

Possession

** 1/2 [2 1/2 stars out of 5]

Review:

Niel LaBute is famous for making evil films. Evil doesn't mean that they're bad or anything like that. In fact, they're always just short of brilliant. It's just that he's a misanthrope when he writes and he tends to focus on the worst in people. Even his previous one, "Nurse Betty" had an air of nastiness about it.

He didn't write all of this one, and co-writers David Hwang and Laura Jones have managed to tame him. This is a romance, pure and simple. But LaBute's nastiness does indeed peek through at some of the more opportune places, which is part of the fun.

Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is a literary scholar, working for the British museum on an exhibition on Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam), the chaste Poet Lauriate to Queen Victoria.

Doing some research, Roland comes apon some old love letters by the bard in a book of his. Being a character in a Niel LaBute movie, he steals them, and then goes on an archeological quest to discover what these letters mean.

This brings him into the provinces, where Dr. Maud Bailey(Gwyneth Paltrow), an expert on the poetess Christabel Lamotte(Jennifer Ehle) is a professor of Literature. They then go on an archeological adventure, unearthing letters between Lamotte and Ash, revealing an affair between the two. Meanwhile Maud and Roland fall in love.

It's actually pretty amazing, what with Maud being cured of her lesbianism and all. The acting is superb, and if you like "Masterpiece Theater" or BBC America, this film is definitely for you.

Eric Lurio

Culture Vulture

Possession (2002)

In earlier films that he both wrote and directed (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors) and in plays he has written (Bash, The Shape of Things) Neil LaBute has demonstrated a talent for the theatrical and a dark vision of the world that tends to both condemn and, at the same time, revel in people's weaknesses. His new film, Possession is a departure, based not on his own screenplay, but on a screenplay by David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly), in turn based on the Booker Prize winning novel by A.S. Byatt. In a way it's a relief to see LaBute get past his evident misanthropy and into a Merchant-Ivory world of wit and romance; unfortunately the end product is dramatically unbalanced.

A young scholar, Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart), accidentally discovers a letter tucked away in a book at the library. It is from a renowned nineteenth century poet, Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) to his extramarital lover, Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). Michell, suspecting he is on to an important discovery, blithely steals the letter and then contacts a professor whose specialty is LaMotte, Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow). Together they begin an investigation into the relationship between these two nineteenth century poets, played out a bit like a mystery story, while flashbacks recreate the events that they are uncovering.

Ash and LaMotte's story is an intriguing one because it upsets the previously held images of these (fictional) historical characters. Ash, poet laureate to Queen Victoria, was seen as a paragon of monogamous virtue; he celebrated his relationship with his wife in his poems. LaMotte, a hero to feminists, was an independent type who lived in a long-term lesbian relationship. Documentation of an affair between Ash and LaMotte would be an academic career-making breakthrough, shaking up the world of scholarly English literature and necessitating a revaluation and revision of earlier thinking about the work of both poets.

In the midst of all the detective work, Michell and Bailey, become emotionally involved with each other; their romance plays in parallel time (but not in nature) to that of the nineteenth century poets. Labute smoothly and creatively handles the transitions back and forth between periods. Tacked on, quite gratuitously in the film version at least, is a subplot of competing scholars following at Michell and Bailey's heels. The characters involved in the latter are never developed; they are stick figures whose behaviors (including grave robbing) stretch the credulity of the narrative.

It is the two love stories which are the substance of the film. The poets' relationship is cast in idealistic, hyper-romantic terms--poetry flowing, glances from a distance, a social and verbal foreplay of charm and intensity. That both parties are betraying their truly beloved partners adds to the exquisite construct of their romance. Love comes always accompanied by sacrifice and pain, but the fleeting shared moments are never regretted, whatever the fallout. Ehle (Bedrooms and Hallways, Sunshine) is engaging as LaMotte, projecting both intelligence and alluring sexiness, making Ash's passion for her seem fully understandable. (Her resemblance to her radiant mother, actress Rosemary Harris, is palpable.) And Northam (An Ideal Husband, Gosford Park, The Winslow Boy), too, is an actor who says as much with his eyes and facial expressions as he does with his elegantly delivered lines. Their's is a hothouse romance, stylized in Victorian convention, in keeping with the literary source, and abetted by the considerable screen chemistry between two accomplished actors.

In direct contrast, as portrayed here the romance between the twentieth century academics seems rather pathetically contemporary, both of them holding back defensively in fear of commitment and in view of the hurts and disappointments they have experienced in past love affairs. Both, as well, seem more native to LaBute's customary world of the self-protective and self-centered. Courtship skills are notable by their absence. It's easy to accept the difficulty in their groping steps towards one another since there isn't a hint of chemistry between the two actors; they seem to be inhabiting separate emotional planets. Paltrow (The Royal Tenenbaums, Shakespeare in Love) remains a winning screen presence, but her gravitas as a scholar and a feminist isn't powerful enough and then melts too quickly after Eckhart appears.

It's Eckhart (In the Company of Men, Nurse Betty) who fatally weakens their part of the film (which gets substantially more time than the Victorians). He doesn't project any of the characteristics which might have helped him embody a serious scholar of English literature, on the one hand, and an emotionally bruised and psychologically numbed adult on the other. With his perennial two day growth of beard (surely that fashion-victim look is long out of style by now?) and scruffy clothes, he looks more the Big Ten undergraduate. His lines, as delivered, come from a script, not from an internalized character. As one of Labute's favored actors, they both must shoulder responsibility for this clueless performance which, in large measure, undermines the film.

- Arthur Lazere

SUN PUBLICATIONS (CHICAGO, IL)

Passionless moments

'Possession' has the look -- not heart -- of romance

By Josh Larsen
movie editor

Watching "Possession," a lushly appointed romantic drama starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart, is a bit like hearing a disinterested high-schooler read one of Shakespeare's sonnets as part of a class assignment: The words are there, but the passion is missing.

It makes for a curious movie. Based on a Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name by A.S. Byatt, "Possession" follows two modern scholars -- distant English academic Maud Bailey (Paltrow) and visiting American Roland Michell (Eckhart) -- as they uneasily team up to investigate a possible affair that may have been shared by their respective research subjects: 1850s feminist author Christabel LaMotte and poet laureate Henry Ash.

We're set up, in a sense, for a double dose of romance. As Maud and Roland's work draws them closer together, period flashbacks to the 1850s trace the illicit relationship between the fictional LaMotte and Ash -- illicit because Ash's legacy is built upon a series of romantic poems he dedicated to his wife.

It all sounds very promising -- a smart romance driven by an intriguing literary mystery -- and "Possession" certainly comes dressed to impressed. Elegant window dressing abounds, particularly in the flashback sequences featuring Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle as Ash and LaMotte, who sport sumptuous costumes while wooing each other in dramatic settings.

Yet it's also in these scenes where the movie feels most flat. Perhaps it's an inevitable result of being paired with more modern moments, but the flashbacks have a stiff formality that's jarring, as if we've been flipping television channels and suddenly come across a "Masterpiece Theatre" presentation on PBS. The best period dramas are those that immerse us in the customs and details of a strange time and place, but the parallel structure of "Possession" doesn't allow us to ever become comfortable in the tale of LaMotte and Ash.

No such excuse can be made for the modern story, which is equally lacking in fire. Paltrow, as you might expect, nicely conveys Maud's cool demeanor, but as the working relationship between Maud and Roland deepens into something else, she never really warms up. Eckhart, meanwhile, has shown impressive range before -- he broke out as a sadistic office chauvinist in "In the Company of Men" and was equally effective as Julia Roberts' soulful biker boyfriend in "Erin Brockovich" -- but he falters here. Roland is supposed to be the laid-back American, but Eckhart makes him less casual than flippant, as when he attempts to flirt with Maud by telling her she's "amazing-looking."

"Possession" is the fourth film Eckhart has appeared in for writer-director Neil LaBute, and it may be LaBute more than the movie's structure or the performances who is responsible for its lack of amorous verve. By following "In the Company of Men," his debut, with the hateful relationship picture "Your Friends & Neighbors," LaBute established himself as an auteur of modern anger. He threw a successful curveball with 2000's "Nurse Betty," but even that zippy crime comedy had moments of meanness. In any case, none of his earlier efforts aimed for the sort of open-hearted romanticism needed in "Possession."

Whether or not you found LaBute's first films to be provocative or poisonous, there was no denying that the director behind them had a passion for the material. Here, that inherent dedication seems to be missing. And when you're watching a movie about poets, romance and the sort of love that can bridge the centuries, one thing you want to feel is passion.

eFilmCritic.com

-- James E. Laczkowski

THE EFC REVIEW:

Neil LaBute is one of the best writers we got. His latest is a tale that delves into the power of words and writing, and examines love and passion from both the present as well as the past. Between numerous flashbacks and cut-aways, the sense of passion or interest that we might have towards the characters is strangely absent. "Possession" doesn't really possess the viewer into either world because it's too busy interchanging between the two time settings. How can one get a sense of real delight with any four of these people when they seem at such a distance? The script is the clearly the star here, but sadly, the narrative structure deadens the pace and doesn't leave for much interaction.

LaBute is the stuff that dreams are made of. Think of Mamet, yes, but he is clearly infatuated with the English language and the art of dialogue much like a guy like, oh, Shakespeare might've been although he may not have reached that point yet. God bless him for his contribution to movies thus far, even if "Possession" along with "Nurse Betty" doesn't reach the apex of his two solo acts, "Your Friends And Neighbors," and "In The Company Of Men." Perhaps LaBute doesn't work well with other writers because on his last two films, he enlisted the help of two others. There are certainly extraordinary dialogue exchanges between each pair of lovebirds, but how can we be let in, when each cut seems to be removing us from what's taking place? It's one of the more frustrating and languid experiences I've had at the cinema all year, and it saddens me to even put that sentence together being a LaBute fan.

It's not all a bore, however. Aaron Eckhart is also the stuff that dreams are made of. Here's a man, who MUST somehow be related to Peter Krause of "Six Feet Under," who has got it all and makes guys like us green with envy. Looks, charm, charisma, wisecracks, he could very well be a Bruce Campbell version of Cary Grant, and if any movie is going to make him a star, then this should be it. He should've been nominated alone for either of his previous LaBute endeavors, but he steals the show, and more than likely, the hearts of all horny housewives in America. But a soap opera star he is not.

Morality plays a big part in all of LaBute's films. Some are completely devoid of it like his debut, while his sophomore effort, which is better of the two, examine it from different angles. Here, LaBute is reaching into romantic idealism, but comes up short. Yes there are magical moments like the final scene where a certain mystery comes together, but both love stories just don't seem all that real to be plausible. It is certainly great to see the two of them fall in love with the printed page and the power it contains, but how or why does it necessarily lead to a conquest in the sack for either of the couples when we're not allowed to know them all that well?

I like the term that Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington used to describe "Possession"... which is mummified. The film is wrapped up itself to really let the audience in on the beauty. It's a fantastic story, and there is no doubt I will pick up the novel, but something is lost in the translation. "Possession" tells of two on-the-surface romances, more than a century apart, and botches both of them. Here, he's enamored with a concept that screams for depth, but the overwhelmingly facile script is unwilling to provide it. Neither story really goes anywhere, stretches the limits of fidelity, and their juxtaposition grabs our interest only because of the occasional visual trickery between settings.

The premise seemed nothing if not interesting; certainly, I didn't expect the resouding disappointment that the film delivers. When the end credits suddenly appear, I was beside myself. Is that it Eckhart, stars as Roland Mitchell, an American sent to the Museum of London as a research assistant to a professor of Victorian Poetry. While snooping around in the museum's gargantuan library, he stumbles upon two love letters written by legendary (and fictional) poet Randolph Henry Ash, long thought an angel when it came to monogamy and morality, despite the fact that he and his wife were known not to have consummated their relationship. It seems that the master of amorous Victorian poetry had a secret mistress and was quite passionate about her. Another slut in the making of course. Perhaps he should make a time machine and jump years ahead into the future to hang out with Diane Lane in "Unfaithful."

Roland suspects that said mistress may have been another well-known poet named Christabel LaMotte, and he consults Dr. Maud Bailey (English-speaking Gwyneth Paltrow, giving another lazy performance), a master of the subject. At first skeptical, the icy professor of women's studies assists Roland in his hunt for further clues, and the two begin to uncover details about Ash and LaMotte that no stuffy, not nearly so gorgeous scholar had even imagined. Of course, they couldn't do any of these things without falling in love with each other; this, even though Roland has explicitly sworn off relationships with women and Maud is dating Roland's slimy, snotty, very British fellow researcher, in a role tailor-made for Hugh Grant but given instead to Toby Stephens who eventually tries to take credit for the discovery himself. I guess they had to throw in an obligatory bad guy part just to balance the good.

The major complaint I have is this: we don't really get to know much of what the characters truly long for, nor have sympathy for the people that the poet writers cheat on. Why do the wife and lover of both Ash and LaMotte play such a smaller part in the film completely? Indeed, the film is told from the written words and the points of view of the two leads, but it's rather difficult to cheer them on as they begin their affair. It's hard to believe the spontaneity of Roland and Maud starting their affair based on mere letter readings, harder still to accept the relative readiness with which Randolph and Christabel fall into theirs. We don't get to know them well enough is the issue at hand here. Only do brief flickers of passion and magic erupt, especially a gorgeous scene involving Randolph and Christabel's first meeting at a train stop. If only every scene had that poignancy.

The Bailey and Mitchell love story is more compelling of the two as we watch their curiosity blossom into affection. But the obvious weight of cliche kicks in the moment we discover they have to share a hotel room together. Sigh. Can you guess what happens when you put a man and women in the same room together, forced to sleep side by side? Hmmmm... Both Jeremy Northam and Eckhart do possess longing in their puppy-dog eyes but either of the two actresses really sold me on their "love" for the two of them. LaBute's film is merely on the outside looking in, without truly delving into the hearts and minds of each character. Only do the opening readings of the letters provide insight, but I was simply left numb by the intersecting of the two plots as they unravel. And of course, the big revelations are few and far between. Not much happens in the way of surprise, but I guess for some that might be refreshing after a slew of shock endings. Overall, it leaves you wanting more, and not in a good way mind you.

LaBute's fourth outing is a languorous disappointment, but not a complete failure. Because this guy seems to have a way with words and a flawless script is always at hand, it's easy to recommend the film based on dialogue and the way Eckhart delivers it alone. However, it's the story and the structure that needed a reworking, for "Possession" only has mere moments of grace, and because these scenes are so beautiful and powerful, you watch the rest of the film expecting more just like them, only they are sadly not delivered.

FilmCritic.com

* 1/2 [1 1/2 stars out of 5]

Possession

A film review by Jeremiah Kipp - Copyright © 2002 filmcritic.com

A.S. Byatt's Booker Award-winning novel Possession might have provided some literary delight, following two academics who track the love letters of a Victorian poet and his free-spirited mistress. That doesn't translate well to cinema, though. Neil LaBute's film adaptation boils down to a buttoned-down Gwyneth Paltrow (sporting her Academy Award winning faux-Brit accent from Shakespeare in Love) and square-jawed Aaron Eckhart running from one Masterpiece Theater location to the next (the library, the moors, the waterfall, the gothic archway, the castle wall, and the moonlit graveyard) all the while reading aloud from the correspondence of dead Englishmen.

While it might make a charming book-on-tape for the Oprah crowd, this "love loves to love love" hokum masquerades as a real movie. The present day academics exist in counterpoint to the period movie flashbacks (basically Jeremy Northam donning his suit again and looking forlorn, intercut with shots of his beautiful mistress Jennifer Ehle looking voluptuous and forlorn). And they talk, talk, talk about subtext within the letters; but they're actually talking about each other. Yes, it's When Harry Met Sally in the Library. So help me God, Eckhart's emotional revelation is when he asks Paltrow, "Is there an Us in You and Me?" (If I were Paltrow, I'd say, "I'll call you.")

LaBute attempts to create a parallel between the heightened romanticism of days gone by with the postmodern, chilly hustle and bustle of modern life. He's got a penchant for aloof yuppie scum, as evidenced in Your Friends and Neighbors and In the Company of Men, and Possession plays best as another example of, "People are real bastards nowadays, aren't they?" Eckhart's character doesn't want to get tied down in (cough, cough) relationships, living happily as a bachelor and lone ranger. Paltrow, on the other hand, expresses her character through a tightly wound hair-bun and shrill, me-so-bitchy line readings. It's hardly worth noting the Northam-Ehle period scenes, since they're mostly done in the form of pretty montages. They might as well exist inside a snow globe Eckhart and Paltrow are marveling over.

So why must we suffer through this kind of crap? I'd like to blame Miramax for running their period film adaptations into the ground with one lofty literary fiasco after another. As with anything else, some filmmakers and greedy producers noted the success of Howard's End and started the vicious cash cow cycle again. Now that they've plundered their E.M. Forster and D.H. Lawrence, they're moving on to modern writers like A.S. Byatt who dance to the same repressed Victorian groove. Possession is merely the latest, and most obviously packaged, of the lot. It's a Miramax film presented by a non-Miramax distribution company (Focus), which only says to me, "Good God, it's spreading." Studio player Gwyneth Paltrow takes the lead role, Neil LaBute continues his ascendance up the indie film chain, and Focus sticks with the tried and true: If people loved the book, surely they'll love the movie! Let's hope audiences show a little discriminating taste here.

David Keyes' Cinema 2000

POSSESSION

Rating: *** [3 out of 5 stars]

Review Uploaded
08/23/02

Written by DAVID KEYES

Freudian theories, as demonstrated in Neil LaBute's "Possession," have altered modern romance perhaps more dramatically than society cares to imagine. No longer is the mere essence of love the single most important thing about relationships or commitments; people dictate their lives according to fears and insecurities, pulling away when the chemistry gets intense or the passion escalates beyond their expectations. Lovers analyze and nitpick on minute details, emphasize things that need not to be stressed, and look for excuses not to completely devote themselves to romantic obligations. No, love isn't the entire package anymore; it's a mere detail.

When you contrast that post-Freudian reality with that of an earlier age, you begin to see just how far the scope of relationships has gone topsy-turvy. In ways, that's the immediate goal behind "Possession," a film about two love stories set in seemingly opposite time frames, and how the harsh realities around them can shape the directions and outcomes of two people engaged in passion. Indeed, what does it take for a kind of relationship to survive in any kind of angst-ridden atmosphere? Where are the parallels and differences drawn between the two? And will the results of one always reflect the other? If you have answers to those questions, unfortunately, then you're probably too much of an optimist to even think of seeing the picture.

The movie is LaBute's fourth major screen venture, an interesting and dramatic divergence from his previous material that, despite being meticulously scripted and passionately directed, somehow never quite reaches the enthusiastic thrust of his previous efforts. The film being less character-driven and more plot-dependent is our first clue to this misfortune; in the past, LaBute's pictures have succeeded not because they draw from marvelous and complex screenplays, but because the players involved in the stories react to their situations in extremely unconventional, but observant, ways. Consider the audacity of the main characters of "In The Company of Men" or the subtle tyranny that surfaces with those in "Your Friends and Neighbors"; in such an atmosphere, we don't care nearly as much about the chain of events as much as we do about the participants. In "Possession," those kinds of traits take a back seat to storytelling, and though that's not really a bad thing, it can be somewhat distracting if you're looking for a character to convey the slightest little quirk.

The picture opens with us meeting Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart), a young American scholar in London who is studying the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) as part of his fellowship under the direction of an English college professor. During a visit to the London library, he uncovers a stash of papers wedged in an old book about the late romantic, all of which seem to be written by Ash himself. Believing that this mysterious letter has gone on unknown to historians up to now, he snatches the pages and begins an investigation on them.

Careful studying of the writing leads Roland to conclude that the letter was written to Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), a female poet of that time who, prior to the discovery, was never thought to have a connection to Ash. He takes his findings to an English academic named Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), a researcher of LaMotte's work who also happens to be a family descendant. Maud considers Roland's theories about the link between both poets bizarre and illogical, but when they both investigate the possibility further, they uncover much more than they ever thought possible.

Meanwhile, the movie flashes back to a century earlier when both Ash and LaMotte were alive. He a married man and she a bisexual in a relationship with another woman, they meet by coincidence at the peak of their artistic success, striking up an infatuation for one another that, in typical form for romanticism, leads to a forbidden but passionate love affair. Intimacy, sadly, tends to be followed by great loss and suffering, and as Roland and Maude's quest in current time reveals these details little by little, they get caught up in the web of forbidden love themselves.

As a two-tiered love story creating parallels between the past and the present, "Possession" is gifted with complex and astounding writing. LaBute's script, co-written by David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones, allows two love stories to unfold on top of each other without over-dramatizing or applying too much stress, calculated so that even the slight details can dramatically change the course of events. Where it all fails, unfortunately, is with the movie's characters, who don't have much gusto or charm outside their knowledge of poetry. Aaron Eckhart, who has been in all of the director's films now, has some minor fun with the Roland character (especially when he's stealing things that he shouldn't), but on the whole is nowhere near as memorable as he should be. Paltrow, meanwhile, suffers a major blow by appearing as one of the most boring LaBute characters ever created for the screen, a woman who is so caught up in the post-Freudian reality of romance that it's no wonder she's still a single. No, this is not a bad film because the story's players lack dimension or flair, but had the characterizations even came close to matching the film's fabulous narrative structure, then we could have been dealing with a real winner here. As it stands, "Possession" is a very decent endeavor that misses the mark of a truly fantastic LaBute work.

Compuserve.com

Possession (2002)

movie review by Harvey S. Karten, Compuserve

To the film's credit, the Victorian era is seen as sexier than our own.

Rating out of 4 stars: 3.5

Reviewed by Harvey Karten

Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 6/26/02

Here it is the year 2002. We've sent a man to moon, we've invited the computer, we've proven Jules Verne's prescience by a host of inventions from the submarine to heavier-than-air flying machines. But poor H.G. Wells! He must have figured that we could travel forward and backward in time by now, but no such luck. Ah but wait! We can indeed travel back in time and, not only by seeing movies that concentrate on historic periods. Take what you did last week. Did you ever think that your activities were pursued in pretty much the same manner a hundred years ago? Times change, but people don't; not basically. Each era and geographic location give people distinct cultural values, but basically we all seek love and companionship and in some cases literally travel across the same paths to discover these gifts.

If this sounds farfetched, take a look at the movie "Possession," an August release but anything but a summer pic. Looking like something that would have been released by Merchant and Ivory with scenes that can take the breath away in much the manner that one Victorian poet was so taken in his own time, Neil LaBute directs a film in line with his usual theme of sexual politics. Yet unlike his "In the Company of Men," a low-budgeter about two frustrated office workers who plot to mess up the emotions of a deaf, female co-worker; and the pungent "Your Friends & Neighbors," about two sexually dysfunctional couples; there is hardly a trace of cynicism this time around. "Possession" is a love story centered on two couples, one from the mid-19th century and the other from our own time in England, who travel romantic paths with each other in ways that are both remarkably similar and yet fixed by the cultural mores of their own, separate times.

The tale is anchored by Roland Mitchell (Neil LaBute-favorite Aaron Eckhart), an American scholar of Victorian poetry who goes to England on a fellowship to study the work of Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash (who comes to life in this fictional work by Jeremy Northam). Combing through books of poetry in a specialized library he serendipitously uncovers between the pages some original letters exchanged between Ash and one feminist poet of lesser stature, Christabel LaMotte (who comes to life as Jennifer Ehle). What to do? He surreptitiously pockets the epistles and is introduced to Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), an expert on the life and work of Ms. LaMotte--who accepts the conventional notion that LaMotte never had children or male lovers. Conveniently enough, both Maud Bailey and Christabel LaMotte are feminists, suspicious of men and given to holding them at a distance, while for their part Randolph and Roland both have issues in their lives that prevent them from seizing the day, holding both back at first from professing their desire for the women they have grown to love.

As for the time travel, both the passionate couple of 1859 and their contemporary doubles, if you will, do some traveling around the staggeringly beautiful countryside. Each of the couples has bedded in a remote area to be undisturbed by others who would seek to destroy their union. For example, Randolph's wife, Ellen Ash (Holly Aird), would not be pleased at all to discover her husband's straying from the marriage bed; nor would Fergus (Toby Stephens), Maud's boyfriend, take kindly to her new arrangement with an upstart American.

While A.S. Byatt's novel, which won the Booker prize in 1990, is updated to give a contemporary feel to the movie, photographer Jean Yves Escoffier shifts the camera from the present year to 1859 seamlessly, showing the remarkable ways that Roland and Maud, Randolph and Christabel, are mirror images though separated by almost a century and a half. Yet the screenplay by David Henry Hwang, Laura Jones and the director makes allowance for cultural differences, giving, I think, more accolades to the kinds of lives led by Victorians than those enjoyed by contemporary lovers. For all the stereotypes (such as the idea that Britons during the age of Queen Victoria draped the legs of pianos), the Victorians seem to lead a more emotional life. They didn't talk about sex endlessly as we do today and as reflected in magazines for both women and men, and by not intellectualizing their feelings but rather putting them into stirring poetry, they apparently kept their passions alive more than Americans today--who treat a sexual encounter as casually as a trip to the local luncheonette for a Diet Pepsi.

Gwyneth Paltrow as Maud and Jennifer Ehle as her Victorian "double" Christabel, are both gorgeous; both play their characters as equally repressed despite the greater freedoms of our own day. Both are ultimately liberated, not through Christabel's lesbian alliance with Sabine (Elodie French) and not through Maud's with Fergus but only through meeting the people with whom they share a genuine love. In that regard handsome Aaron Eckhart, who seems to be competing with Tom Cruise for who can have the coolest two-day beard, is miscast--the only negative of this satisfying film. Eckhart, made to order for LaBute's cynical oeuvre, is simply out of Paltrow's class. While we can understand Paltrow's character's distaste for the unctuous Fergus, we cannot see her as Eckhart's soul-mate. He's just too...what's the word?... American.

JoBlo's Movie Emporium

POSSESSION

RATING: 8/10

Review Date: August 13, 2002

PLOT:
A good-looking American in England hooks up with Gwyneth Paltrow and her British accent to investigate the secret passions of a couple of old school poets from back in the day. As they uncover some of the hush-hush ditties between the two, the plot thickens and a little something called love...ensues.

CRITIQUE:
A film about a couple of high-brow literary researchers conducting an extensive background investigation into the lives of two poets from the 19th century? "Wake me when it's done" is what I was thinking when I walked into this puppy, but color my uncouth ass surprised when it actually turned out to be one of the better love stories that I've seen in quite some time. Mind you, perhaps I was just in a sappy mood, or perhaps I was still recovering from my previous night's bender, but whatever the case, this film managed to win me over with its engaging premise, its delightful love stories, its solid acting across the board and its original way of unfolding a plotline. Basically, we follow the lives of these two modern day academics (aka geeks) as they move from library to mansion to museum, chasing the details of these two poets' missives, and as each moment in time is uncovered, we as an audience, are taken into the actual day of the poets, and shown the events as they occur. Sound like fun? What makes it doubly interesting (if this sounds interesting to you in the first place, of course) is that the two parallel stories really managed to engage me throughout. I was especially taken by the poets' journey, and coming from a goof who generally doesn't dig on "period pieces", that should tell you something right there. Like most "love" tales from those days go, these two poor saps had a difficult time "hooking up" because of the societal pressures around them, but it was fun to see how they worked things out via letters, glances and simple touches.

Both actors from that period, Jeremy Northam (does this man do any modern-day stuff?) and Jennifer Ehle (aka Meryl Streep with a chubby face), also did a wondrous job of portraying the angst, frustration and deep-rooted passion between these two characters, making it all that much more believable. I also enjoyed the modern day story with Paltrow and Eckhart (great hair, btw!), which certainly wasn't as deep or gripping as the former tale, but did manage to attain that sweet level, with both characters needing to work through their own sh--, to get to a place where they could accept and love one another. I also dug the chemistry between all of the lovers in the movie (for anyone who knows the "lovers" sketch from "Saturday Night Live", please make sure to pronounce that as "lavers"!), the beautiful landscape and European sights, the way each step of the "mystery" was unraveled and ultimately, the potency of the film's love chronicles. Yes, the film did feel a little contrived near the end and a tad long, but overall I was captivated by all that transpired on the screen, and considering that I'm not exactly the balls-out Neil Labute fan or ready to accept an unconditional love story myself (since my recent break-up, romance/love and I haven't exactly mixed very well), I guess this pony accomplished its trick. Also, the film's not as stuffy as you might think. Eckhart's character plays the "boorish" American studying in England and he has his share of witty quips here and there. Definitely one of the better rounded romance stories of the past year. Hip-hip Labute!

(c) 2002 Berge Garabedian

'Mystery!' fans will like 'Possession'

** 1/2 [2 1/2 stars]

Chris Hewitt
St. Paul Pioneer Press

Published: Friday, August 16, 2002

Books are in love with words. Movies aren't. That's the difference between the two versions of "Possession."

Few recent novels have been as language-mad as A.S. Byatt's dazzling "Possession," about parallel smoochfests. A pair of contemporary scholars, chilly at first, warm to each other as they investigate whether two writers from more than 100 years ago may have had a hitherto unknown relationship (after seeing "Possession," you'll use words like "hitherto," too). Byatt uses fake "excerpts" from the fictional, Victorian writers to draw us in, asking us to examine their poems and stories for clues to their affair.

"Possession," the somewhat chilly movie, can't do that. The book's literary puzzle is all but ignored in favor of depicting how the modern couple (Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow) responds to romance in a way that is distinctly less modern than their fountain-pen-pal counterparts (Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle).

It's disappointing, but probably wise, that the movie jettisons what made the book unique. There's no way to show the literary process unless you're into movies about people in corsets, scribbling next to dim candles for hours on end. Instead, director/screenwriter Neil LaBute focuses on a different kind of puzzle, involving how the past and present both revolve around the idea that "men and women can't seem to help but tear each other apart."

LaBute's period lovers have a more compelling story (although the cliched scene in which Ehle literally lets her hair down plays like "Days of Our Victorian Lives"), so ingratiating actors were wisely cast in the present-day roles: sunny Paltrow and likable Eckhart, so gaunt here that his cheekbones could cut tomatoes.

Most of "Possession" involves those two chatting, and it's refreshing to see a movie with faith that we'll sit still for a conversation about something other than skateboarding. At first, it may strike you as odd that Eckhart's American and Paltrow's Brit spend so much time bickering about the differences between their countries; the Revolutionary War is over, after all, and the British seem to have gotten used to the results.

But then you realize the movie is saying things haven't changed all that much over the centuries, and possessing another's heart is just as puzzling today as it ever was.

The Globe and Mail Review

[Canada]

From Booker to bodice-ripper

By RICK GROEN

Friday, August 16, 2002

Possession

Rating: **1/2 [2 1/2 stars out of 4]

Some books just aren't meant to be movies, and Possession is surely one of them. A.S. Byatt's novel is so intrinsically literate that its only home is between covers. Wrenched out of that natural habitat, it flounders badly, rather like a guy in a midlife crisis making an ill-advised career change. This is the film equivalent of a lawyer putting on a chef's hat or Michael Jordan taking a crack at baseball -- what once was confidently distinguished now seems merely average and a tiny bit desperate.

Back to the book, which is many things. It's a romance, it's a detective story, and it's a discourse on the title -- the possession of the beloved by the lover, of the subject by the biographer, of the past by the present. Mainly, though, it's a tour de force of sheer writing talent harnessed to a scholar's encyclopedic mind. Both artist and professor, Byatt shows off her two hats brilliantly here. The novel is filled with poems and letters written in different styles from different perspectives, all laced with literary references and historical allusions -- none of it translatable by a movie camera.

What's gone, then, is everything that made the book worthy of its Booker Prize -- the sheer weight and play of words, their intellectual heft and emotional punch. With the meat missing, all that remains is the bare bones of the detective yarn and the stark skeleton of the romance. But even these leavings are tricky to adapt, because the plot unfolds in separate time frames. In present-day London, a couple of young academics, Roland and Maud, stumble upon a piece of correspondence that hints at an adulterous relationship between a pair of Victorian poets -- the venerable Randolph Henry Ash, laureate to the Queen herself, and the relatively obscure Christabel LaMotte. So our scholar-sleuths investigate this long-ago passion (cue the period flashbacks), even as they explore their own mutual attraction.

Juggling these particular time frames, Victorian and contemporary, isn't exactly unusual in film -- witness The French Lieutenant's Woman among many others. Instead, what's odd here is the juggler, the choice of director to handle all this amorous Anglophilia. Neil LaBute is suspect on two counts: (1) He's an American; and (2) His previous films, especially In the Company of Men and Friends and Neighbours, are notoriously antiromantic, boasting a cynicism that borders on misanthropy. Politics may make strange bedfellows but the movies are typically more circumspect -- on the surface, at least, LaBute and Byatt seem about as likely a dating match-up as Tarantino and Bronte.

Indeed, perhaps to feel more at home, LaBute's first decision is to Americanize the key figure of Roland, thereby allowing him to cast in the role his favourite actor, Aaron Eckhart, and to add a little cliched tension to the London mix -- the brash, impetuous Yank versus those staid, snide Brits. As for Maud, she isn't Americanized but she is Paltrow-ized. Gwyneth brings her much-practised English accent to the part, wears her hair in a spinsterish bun, and generally hides her gorgeous light under a grad-student's bushel.

From there, LaBute handles the period transitions quite smoothly. Back in the 19th century, our eminent Victorians are rutting like rabbits. The randy Ash (a typecast Jeremy Northam) is spouting every philanderer's come-on: "I love my wife, but not as I love you." The uncorseted Christabel (a beguiling Jennifer Ehle) counters with every home-breaker's rationale: "I can't let you, nor can I resist you." In the book, Byatt is able to dress up this plot in poetic finery, thereby elevating the sentiment from (in her phrase) "vulgar to high romance." But LaBute has neither the instinct nor the means for the job, and the dialogue just sounds trite -- at times, despite the solid performances, almost tumbling into the purple prose of the bodice-ripper.

Meanwhile, in the supposedly liberated present, Roland and Maud are reining in their libidos like a pair of callow pilgrims off to see the Pope. Each is commitment-phobic, you see. Thus, as deterrents to sex, their psychological hang-ups are proving to be much better inhibitors than the Victorians' social code. The irony is deliberate and drawn out. Eventually, all their parrying -- but absolutely no thrusting -- starts to feel as frustrating to the audience as it is to them.

Of course, this is another of the title's possessions -- romance imprisoned by modernism, passion eroded by realism -- and it should be dear to LaBute's cynical side. But he (and his admirable cast) just can't seem to lift this theme beyond the level of easy irony. Consequently, the film leaves us with the worst of the book's two worlds. Here, the unleashed passion of the normally repressed Victorians seems like hokum, and the sexual timidity of the nominally liberated moderns feels like tedium. One gets robbed of its emotional power, the other of its intellectual intrigue.

The movie's flattening effect on the novel is particularly evident in the ending, which it borrows nearly verbatim from Byatt. On the page, the brief scene is a bullet to the heart -- penetrating and inarguably final. But on the screen, the same scene is a misfire -- hollow and abruptly inconclusive. The spoken words haven't changed but, as the writer's art gets filtered through this director's craft, those words lose their fragile magic. At its best, the book has the power to possess us; at no time does the film do more than divert us.

Slant Magazine

Possession

** 1/2 [2 1/2 stars out of 4]

In our modern computer age, history is encrypted in the temporary Internet file, a virtual defense against cultural revisionism. Word of mouth can only go so far and Neil LaBute's Possession (based on the A.S. Byatt novel) suggests that our knowledge of history is nothing less than misinformed. Denizens of the pre-technological age had quills and scrolls of paper at their disposable yet some of their more torrid tales of love and heartache seemed contingent on mere hearsay or the discovery of notes hidden within secret nooks and crannies. In Possession, two literary sleuths fall in love during an amateur detective mission that seeks to shed light on the romantic, extra-marital exploits of the fictional poet Randolph Henry Ash (played in flashbacks by Jeremy Northam). The discovery of an unfinished love letter leads to the assumption that Ash may have been engaged in an illicit affair with fictional poetess and maybe-lesbian Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) scale the British countryside for missing pieces of the puzzle just as director Neil LaBute begins draws comparisons between the poet couple and the modern sleuths that resist romantic ideality.

Nancy Drew and her scruffy Hardy boy find love along the way yet Possession seems less concerned with the hunt than it is with the fascinating notion that history shall forever remain elusive to those who seek it most. Despite its provocative breakdown of historical comforts, the film seems plagued by visual shortcomings. The uneven narrative focus can perhaps be blamed on the crosscutting between parallel tales that otherwise have little to do with one another (indeed, the film's waterfall scene is LaBute's forced visual bridge between past and present). Despite evidence to the contrary, Maud dismisses Roland's claim that Ash was having an affair with Christabel. Though plausible, this hypothesis reeks of an affront to British stoicism by seemingly non-romantic Yank. LaBute, whose first two films were exploitative studies of the modern yuppie, constructs an interesting cultural bridge between Maud and Roland only to dismantle it once the couple finds love. And while Roland repeatedly declares his inability to love, little light has been cast on Roland's past insecurities to explain his present behavior.

Maud and Roland's affection for each other seems grounded solely in their appreciation for detective work (it seems unlikely that they would have fallen in love under any other circumstance). LaBute also touches upon but never really addresses the couple's class differences. Paltrow and Eckhart's screen chemistry is strangely aloof though Paltrow plays the melting ice queen with expert precision. Possession suggests that history and its best-kept secrets have been sequestered by the emotionally guarded. Possession is truly fascinating from a theoretical point of view though much of the film plays out like prime fodder for fans of the romantic comedy. Indeed, a grave-robbing scene cripples the film with folly when it should have seriously shed light on Byatt's concern with her characters' pervasive need to own history. Posession is so visually lightweight that its otherwise potent historical discourse is rendered mute by the slightness of LaBute's romantic and theoretical breath.

Ed Gonzalez
© slant magazine, 2002.

Hollywood Bitchslap

Review by Thom Fowler

THE BITCHSLAP REVIEW:

Whatever A.S. Byatt intended, it wasn't this film version of the best-selling novel. While the trailer makes the film seem like it is full of mystery, passion and romance, it has anything but. If there is a mystery it is the mystery of how this novel turned into such a horrid film. When two scholars come together to unlock the secret affair of a long dead poet, they end up falling in love with each other. I can go along with suspension of disbelief to help move a story along, but I had to be drug by my collar, kicking and screaming to even accept the almost miraculous chain of events.

The "passion" is melodramatic and as flat as a can of soda sitting on a counter for two days in the Louisiana heat. I don't know how many movies can be made where the girl who is perfectly happy with a guy who, until the misunderstood loser comes along, suddenly becomes the "wrong" guy. If you put a man and woman in a motel room together who previously had nothing but professional regard for each other and indeed have been nothing but emotionally cold, of course they are going to have that moment where they accidentally lock eyes and think, "Lets get it on!"

And since sex equals love in a female skewed film, it has to be the start of some important relationship. I can't think of a single reason to go see this. Even the one-liners like "You can't stand in a fire without getting burned" made me look around and say, "well, where's the fire?"

The romance in this film is colder than the pussy of a dead seal on the arctic tundra and more limp than an overcooked noodle. There's nothing to see here. Move Along.

If you need a Paltrow fix, go rent Shallow Hal -- that character is just more interesting. And the unpretentiousness of lines like "Later, dude" may save your soul.

Jeremy Northam as the poet Randolph Ash and Jennifer Ehle as his lover Christabel LaMotte turned in fine performances. It was no fault of the actors. If Merchant-Ivory had gotten ahold of this script, they might have done the wise thing and keep the film in the past and forget all about the contemporary story of the pair, Maud (Paltrow) and Roland (Aaron Eckhart) who are discovering the story mostly through random clues found at the most convenient times. Like in a Scooby Doo episode, Velma's going to find something right in front of her face at some point, the first and only clue which happens to be just the one they need to start cracking the case.

The most ludicrous scenario is when Maud, who is the great granddaughter of Ash, is visiting her great-aunt and uncle and she remembers one of LaMotte's poems that she's known for years and suddenly the poem becomes a riddle hiding a clue! So she goes tearing through the house and finds the letters that prove that LaMotte and Ash had an affair that resulted in the birth of a little girl, who it turns out, is Maud's grandmother.

That final revelatory piece of the puzzle, like so many elements of this film, seemed misplaced. I had no idea the film was about a journey of self-discovery. There was never any intimation that Maud was trying to prove her patronage. I didn't get nearly as emotional and teary as Maud did when she discovered the news. And then, because she's so emotional, she decides she is also in love with Roland.

You know how, in Beer commercials, the guy wants to get the girl drunk so he can take her home and get some, and the girl thinks he's like, really into her as a person and the next day he's like, "yeah, baby, of course I love you" and he doesn't really, but as long as he can keep her believing that, he's got easy access to some tail? That's how I felt about Roland. I didn't get a sense of this tender, romantic side. Sure he studies poetry, but I never felt like Ash's poetry had in some way refined his sensibilities or that he and Maud were coming together through poetry. It just seemed like he was happy to have an instant girlfriend.

I give the romance we are left with at the end of the film approximately two weeks when they roll over and bed, look at each other and say, "naaaah".

Friday, August 16, 2002

REVIEW

Desirable 'Possession'
Literary mystery meets period romance in LaBute's latest

Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic

To watch "Possession," the new film based on A.S. Byatt's novel, is to gradually become aware of two movies occurring simultaneously. There's the movie that director Neil LaBute is trying to make, and the one that's actually on the screen.

The movie being attempted is a searing tale of romantic possession, occurring in two centuries. "Possession" is intended as a comment on love and how we make it, about things that are timeless and things that are affected by convention. It's potentially exciting material, but what we see onscreen is somewhat less than that. "Possession" is an intelligent literary mystery story that holds interest and is intermittently affecting, but it never soars.

LaBute ("Nurse Betty"), who co-wrote the screenplay with Laura Jones ("An Angel at My Table") and playwright David Henry Hwang ("M. Butterfly"), has made a somewhat Americanized version of the story. Roland Michell, the graduate student hero, has been changed from British to American, and although the heroine, Maud Bailey, has been allowed to stay British, she's played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Paltrow can do the accent, but there's something about watching her play a British academic that feels faintly like a game of dress- up -- a sophisticated game, but a game all the same.

"Possession" deals with the gradual uncovering of a secret romance that took place in the mid-19th century and involved Randolph Ash (Jeremy Northam), who we're to understand was one of Britain's greatest poets. Young Roland (Aaron Eckhart) is doing research in the British Library's Ash collection when he comes across an undocumented letter, in Ash's hand, tucked into the leaf of a book. Based on the contents of the letter, the graduate student makes an intuitive leap. He postulates that Ash, who was known to have been happily married, had a secret lover who was the real inspiration behind his love poetry.

TIME TRAVELER

As the story gradually emerges, "Possession" jumps back and forth across time. In the 19th century scenes, Ash meets the poet Christabel LaMotte at a soiree, and the two establish a correspondence that gradually deepens. Paltrow,

as Maud, plays the leading LaMotte scholar, who teams up with Roland to get to the bottom of the story.

If "Possession" is meant to contrast the splendor of love as practiced in the 19th century with the scratch-yourself casualness of the 21st century, it succeeds all too well. In one scene, Roland visits Maud, and they decide rather spontaneously to go on a research jaunt that lasts several days. The result is that we see, in scene after scene, Eckhart dressed in the same jeans and sweater. His hair is sticking up, he needs a shave and at one point he even implies that he's not big on washing. It's a unique romance that puts a viewer into a state of anxiety about a protagonist's cleanliness.

So it comes as a relief each time the movie pays a visit to 1860. There, love has consequences. When Ash and LaMotte go off to spend several weeks in the country together, they risk the destruction of their lives -- which, of course, makes the sex better. When Christabel, played by the radiantly intelligent Jennifer Ehle, exclaims, on the first day of their trip, "How can you bear it? Every day we will have less!," "Possession" becomes, for those seconds, the movie it was intended to be.

ROMANTIC FANTASY

In the 19th century, the lovers give in to love, even though they're not allowed to, while in the 21st, we see Maud and Roland resisting love, even though they're free to do as they please. It's ironic that even though the 19th century was the era of gothic romance, it's the 21st century scenes that come off most like a romance novel in "Possession," and in the worst way.

"I'd like to see if there's an 'us' in you and me," Roland tells Maud, and at that moment we realize, if we haven't already, that we're not seeing a true presentation of modern love. We're seeing the fantasy of a scruffy, cuddly, sensitive stranger, a kind of modern-day Heathcliff after sensitivity training.

At least Eckhart is good at it. He seems like a nice guy. And though Paltrow is not anybody's idea of a British professor, the movie-star thing does have its advantages. The moment in which she finally lets down her hair is probably the most beautiful close-up this month at the movies.

Wasington Post

'Possession': Deconstructing Randy

By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 16, 2002; Page C05

"Possession" seems to be a mutation of English mad cow disease that might be called English mad poet disease. It's literature-crazed, image-haunted, word-gushy, emotion-spewing and endless, like a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne on an absinthe bender.

The surprise is that it comes from the previously interesting director Neil LaBute, whose "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors" were nail-tough examinations of American male pathology. He hit the bigger time in "Nurse Betty," a gentler movie, but in "Possession" he seems like the one possessed. It's as if the Norton Anthology of Victorian Poetry bonked him on the head and took over his personality.

Or maybe it was "The French Lieutenant's Woman," with which this film shares a similar structure and a similar concern for intense 19th-century love storms. It also boasts two stars who bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the exquisite Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep of the fine film version of that fine novel.

Actually the book that fell on LaBute was "Possession," by A.S. Byatt, which you couldn't pay me enough to read. Based on the onscreen evidence, it extracted a sample of highly neurotic Victorian poet behavior from a variety of nutcase versifiers and synthesized them into a couple of fictional figures, then filtered the whole thing through a prism of postmodernism. The only thing missing is Lewis Carroll's irksome "thing" for small girls.

You know the Victorians: They were hysterical, swaddled in silk, always fainting, calling for their smelling salts, using too many capital letters, and worrying about stuff like Love, Art and Androgyny. And those were the men! LaBute's screenplay, which he wrote with the playwright David Henry Hwang and Aussie Laura Jones, revels in these melancholy humors of mind.

It's one of those tricky narratives, where there are two presents and the movie swings between them for ironic contrasts, sometimes without editing cuts, so that as the camera pans it magically travels the centuries. In one present, which is the lush English countryside of 1860, the eminent Victorian poet Randolph Ash (Irons lookalike Jeremy Northam), is writing love poems to his sainted wife. (He never had sex with her; how perfectly Victorian is that?) But he is secretly wooing the eminent Victorian poetess Christabel LaMotte (Streep lookalike Jennifer Ehle), a discreet lesbian who lives quietly with her partner, the painter Blanche Glover (Lena Headey).

In the second present, which is in London's academic-boho precincts of 2002, a scruffy Yank PhD expert on Ash named Roland Michell (LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart) stumbles across evidence suggesting that Ash and LaMotte actually, you know, did it! Oh mein Gott, she vas his girlfriend! Since this possibility is unknown to scholars, Michell understands that such a discovery will rescue his faltering career, but he must consult with a stuffy Brit PhD expert in LaMotte named Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) for confirmation of his thesis. Of course they fall in love as they travel England hunting down the possibility and trying to stay ahead of a thinly imagined team of competing scholars.

"Possession," how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. I hate thee for the arch, ostensibly witty dialogue that cannot have ever passed spontaneously between human lips. I hate thee for the immense tonnage of imitation-Victorian epistolary prose that sounds like the winning entries in a Bad Writing Contest sponsored by an Irish beer. I hate thee for the arbitrariness of the relationship between Eckhart and Paltrow, which lurches from intimacy to tears to anger simply to keep the plot interesting (sample dialogue: "I'm trying to find out if there's an 'us' in you and me."), unsustained by any chemistry between the two of them.

I hate thee for the absurd ease with which the two scholars make their discoveries and for the grotesque stereotyping of the "bad" academics. I almost do love thee, I must confess, for a zany scene in which PhDs have a fistfight in the mud, but that's a recondite preference. But mainly I hate thee for Gwyneth Paltrow's English accent.

"Shakespeare in Love" may have been the worst thing to happen to this young talent, because it seems to have conferred upon her the confidence to play British as a career motif. Yet in this film her accent is thin and wavery and extremely annoying. I can't say why it worked in "Shakespeare" and is a catastrophe in "Possession" except to conjecture that she had better luck guided by a British director, who could hear and correct her miscues in run-through, than with an American one, who can't.

I suppose one should tip one's hat to a movie whose subject is romantic poetry as opposed to, say, exploding Ferraris, but "Possession" tries to do too much too fast and doesn't do it well enough. On top of that, it doesn't rhyme.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

Hollywood Reporter

Possession

Aug. 09, 2002

By Kirk Honeycutt

Who knew that beneath the facade of cool cynicism that is Neil LaBute -- or at least the Neil LaBute of his first two films, "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends & Neighbors" -- beats the heart of a wild romantic?

"Possession," which he directed and co-wrote with David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones, explores romantic desire in a devilishly clever screenplay based on A.S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel. What propels everything in this film is a rapturous sense of passion -- for language, for England and literature and, most of all, for romance.

This film is aimed with no apologies at mature adults. Put it this way: A guy gets into bed with Gwyneth Paltrow, and his first impulse is to read poetry. We're in Merchant Ivory territory with a touch of Tom Stoppard's witty play "Arcadia," in which academic pursuits have emotional appeal. If marketed well by Focus Features, the film, despite succumbing to melodramatic excess, could become an art house hit.

"Possession" takes place in parallel time periods -- present day and the Victorian era. The surprise is that it's the moderns who are emotionally stunted, not the Victorians. Our two moderns are Roland (Aaron Eckhart), an American on a fellowship in London to study the great Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, and Maud (Paltrow), an authority on Victorian poet Christabel LaMotte, who is her ancestor.

They meet professionally after Roland discovers two previously unknown drafts of letters by Ash that suggest a romantic liaison between him and LaMotte. Maud is too polite to laugh. Nevertheless, she does point out the unlikelihood of any relationship between Ash, known for poems dedicated to his beloved wife, and LaMotte, a feminist and lesbian.

As the literary detective work evolves, the movie transports us back into the lives of the two poets. Dashing Jeremy Northam is robust and coolly casual as Ash. The lovely Jennifer Ehle gives an exquisite portrait of a lady experiencing a new kind of passion, while the darkly beautiful Lena Headey, as Christabel's lover, Blanche, also experiences something new but deeply disturbing -- sexual jealousy.

The methodical work of true academic research gets left in the dust in this movie, where clues come more rapidly than in a murder mystery and the trail leads the researchers across England and even to France. What is marvelously fun -- and funny -- about this somewhat tongue-in-cheek portrait of the academicians is that they have less scruples than Cold War spies.

As romance blooms in parallel stories, the two couples' impulses are wildly different. The Victorians, whose foreplay is verbal rather than physical, respond to passions once they are declared. But the moderns, played with a nice balance between harmony and dissonance by Paltrow and Eckhart, initially stay aloof, fearing passion's flame and wary of its consequences.

In this film, LaBute indulges in a love for all things British from its dusty chambers and prestigious museums to cheerful London streets and rural splendors. Only foreigners -- the American director and his French cinematographer, Jean Yves Escoffier -- would lovingly transform Britain into a place so lushly romantic. Two Merchant Ivory veterans, designer Luciana Arrighi and costumer Jenny Beavan, are on hand to make certain the look of both periods has dramatic resonance.

The film goes over the top near the end with midnight grave-robbing and fights between academics. LaBute also has a tendency to hit his dramatic notes too hard, as if fearful audiences won't get the point. But these drawbacks are small compared to an otherwise witty, literate and mesmerizing bit of romantic escapism.

Village Voice

Literary Agents

by J. Hoberman

August 14 - 20, 2002

"It is possible for a writer to make, or remake at least, for a reader, the primary pleasures of eating, or drinking, or looking on, or sex," A.S. Byatt's narrator observes in Possession. But novels "do not habitually elaborate on the equally intense pleasure of reading." That, of course, is the self-reflexive subject of Byatt's celebrated literary mystery--in which, thanks to a series of purloined letters, a dotty pair of English academics discover a hitherto unknown love affair between two Victorian poets, the Robert Browning-like Randolph Henry Ash and Christina Rossetti-esque Christabel LaMotte.

Shuttling back and forth betwixt the centuries, Byatt's novel not only involves lengthy missives but actual poems, tales, and other texts (all written by Byatt) to be savored and decoded by two increasingly obsessive scholars, glam feminist Maud Bailey and post-doctoral drone Roland Michell. Which is to say, Byatt's Possession is, by and large, a leisurely assemblage of exquisitely detailed period pastiches offered up for the delectation of the amazed reader. Montage and parallel action may be inherently cinematic devices, but literary as it is, such a novel is essentially unadaptable to the screen--save in the most rigorous Straub-Huillet or reductive Merchant-Ivory terms. Neil LaBute opts for something closer to the latter.

In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, as well as the plays Bash and especially last year's The Shape of Things, established LaBute as a delicately brutal purveyor of anti-romantic bedroom comedy (or is that cruelty?)--an artist at once austere and lascivious, punitive yet provocative. Does the maestro of mean sex have something to prove? Directed from someone else's script, his Nurse Betty was an intelligent, exceedingly credible, almost feel-good entertainment. Possession represents another sort of self-effacement. It demonstrates that, given material of sufficient delicacy, LaBute can crochet a cinematic doily fit for the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow.

As reconfigured for the screen, Maud (Paltrow) and Roland (LaBute axiom Aaron Eckhart) are necessarily less eccentric--not to mention less nerdy--than in the novel. Still, Possession is a movie about academics in love. Maud and Roland break all the rules in ransacking libraries and researching manuscripts; panting eagerly for new revelations concerning Ash's chaste marriage or the fate of Christabel's jealous longtime companion, they are no less ardent than the grappling adulterers of an Adrian Lyne film. For Byatt, this moist and breathless enthusiasm is poignant and amusing, hence the bodice-ripper title. LaBute takes the notion somewhat more literally--subsuming, or perhaps desublimating, the odd couple's light-fingered literary adventurism in a more conventional romance that is hampered by the lack of Paltrow-Eckhart chemistry.

In the novel, Maud and Roland's grave-robbing academic rivals are rich, idiotic Americans. LaBute upsets that particular symmetry by making Roland an American abroad. (Paltrow, of course, plays Maud as British.) Both within and outside the narrative, Eckhart serves as a constant source of irritation. His big cleft chin perpetually unshaven and deep-set beady eyes scanning the set for obstacles, he looks more like a dissolute tight end than an oppressed research assistant. Thus the director inserts an insecure surrogate into the twittery proceedings--although, to judge from his press, LaBute must be the most highly regarded American playwright in London.

In its own generic realm of period adaptation, the movie is less sentimental than cheerfully bucolic, not so much genteel as blandly picturesque--although the obtrusive score and sluggish flow do combine for an unpleasant treacle effect. But then Possession, which was optioned by Paula Weinstein over a decade ago and credits two writers besides LaBute, is a producer's movie at heart. LaBute's usually cold-eyed direction is here coolly impersonal; his scenario is genially meandering as opposed to aggressively formalist. The structure is fluid, but never startling. The situation's perversity is muted while the touching final revelation is grossly overplayed.

LaBute is a demonstrably gifted director of actors, for whom he can provide whiplash dialogue, yet none of the performances in Possession are very much fun. There are plenty of supercilious Brits--with Paltrow's Maud the most supercilious of them all. A suave ironist in Gosford Park and Enigma, Jeremy Northam seems unmoored in the more romantic role of Randolph Henry Ash. Perhaps he's been hypnotized by the round-faced, green-cloaked poetess Jennifer Ehle, whose gracious smile and wide-eyed twinkle as Christabel LaMotte have the uncanny animation of a young girl's favorite doll come to life.

In short, Possession suffers from insufficient nastiness. Everyone, save the designated villains and professionally obnoxious Eckhart, is altogether too dear. I'd like to credit LaBute for the few zingers glimmering in the chitchat haze, but even these are disappointingly faint. Perhaps Maud's characterization of Ash as a "softcore misogynist" is the director's way of winking at himself.