RyanCracknell.com

Possession

by Ryan Cracknell

Those crazy academics are up to no good again, stealing long lost love letters, digging up Victorian scandals and bidding ridiculous prices at Sotheby's auctions. The past plays instigator for the present in Neil LaBute's Possession, a stuffy film disguised as a romance/thriller/Nancy Drew-Hardy Boys team-up. The film is based on the 1990 novel by A.S. Byatt.

American Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is in London on a fellowship to research renowned Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) whose flowery prose was believed to show a man of monogomy and old-fashioned chivalry. However, after discovering a letter that contradicts these claims, Roland teams with Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), a highly regarded gender studies professor, to trace the origins of the mysterious letters and find out what really happened some 100 year previous.

Discovering clues like a bonafide pair of junior detectives, Roland and Maud travel the British countryside to lush locale after lush locale. Their journey mirrors that of Ash and his mistress Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), a fellow poet. The sweeping vistas along with the intricate 19th-century costumes make Possession a pleasant film to look at if nothing else.

The time-bending romance had me thinking of Jeannot Szwarc's Somewhere in Time, but Possession lacks the passion that made Szwarc's film so endearing. Roland and Maud both have unresolved personal issues that make them fear romance and commitment, yet these issues are not explored. They're brought up briefly, only to be followed by awkward and ultimately meaningless moments of silence. The journey into history Roland and Maud take does parallel the romantic fires stoked by Randolph and Christabel. But other than working closely together around romantic poems, it is hard to see why they might fall for one another other than the fact that they're a pair of Hollywood beauties. But LaBute tries to emphasize passion, not lust.

And what would a search for treasure be without some pirates trying to ruin the party? Enter Fergus Wolff (Toby Stephens) and Morton Cropper (Trevor Eve), the snobbiest of all the academics, deceptive, cruel and with loyalty only to their own personal gain. Working as rivals to Maud and Roland, these baddies resemble a mix of bumbling Scooby-Doo villains and the wealthy country club patrons that are mocked and beaten in most any Adam Sandler movie. Fergus and Morton lighten the air a little, but the tone doesn't fit. I'd blame it in large part to the fact that the pair are mere sketches, not full blown characters. One is a jealous putz, the other is a free spending glory hound. Because that's all we get to know about the two they never feel like much of a threat. It puts the spotlight on the fact that LaBute appears to be torn on the direction he wants Possession to take. Romance? Period passion? Mystery? Exploration of academic society? Now nitwits? Give me some bread crumbs while I go search for the purpose.

I was never drawn into either of the time periods Possession explores, nor any of the criss-crossing storylines. This movie is all over the place, touching on many themes and emotions, but it fails to fully explore any one area to the point of satisfaction.

Film Freak Central

POSSESSION (2002)

* (out of four)

There's the seed of an interesting idea in Neil LaBute's Possession--something traceable to A.S. Byatt's melodramatic novel of the same name: the film's one clumsily extended trope that it is about keepsakes and the desire for memento mori and memento amor as it manifests amongst intellectuals. That this seed never germinates, limping along before being crushed beyond recognition by an unforgivable grave-robbing sequence is due to LaBute's icy disconnection (badly misplaced here) and the horrific realization that Possession is two stultifying formulas vying for screentime.

On the one hand, the picture is a heaving-bosoms bodice-ripper circa 1859 featuring fictional poet laureate Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) and his correspondence-inspired love affair with fictional lesbian poet Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). That these two are make-believe is pretty obvious (snippets of Byatt's horrible "Victorian" poems prove less Tennyson (the actual poet laureate in 1859) than "moony fifteen-year-old"); more surprising is the fact that besides being fictional, LaBute's historical lovers don't appear to have a pulse.

On the other hand, Possession is an insipid present-day meet-cute romance between gifted graduate student Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) and icy women's studies professor Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), allegedly falling in love as they unearth the incriminating evidence of Ash and LaMotte's tepid indiscretions. The parallel stories lead to an unusual amount of showy transitions (reminding more than once of this year's abhorrent Triumph of Love) and stupid Encyclopedia Brown revelations (the discovery of a pack of letters underneath a doll is the height of Nancy Drew insipid), highlighting all of the shortcomings of the novel (plot, character) while illuminating none of its marginal charms (language).

Possession is torturous viewing scored and narrated by Gabriel Yared's soaring violins that for as invasive as they are admittedly provide the only insight into the feelings of the characters for one another. Though it seems wholly unlikely that dead fish Ash and cold fish LaMotte could have any kind of relationship, it's even more unlikely that typically immature Yank Roland could strike up any kind of flame with typically icy Brit Maud. The introduction of a pair of villains in evil Professor Cropper (Trevor Eve) and his henchman, the duplicitous Fergus Wolff (Toby Stephens), is so wretched and fatigued that the whole of the project is suffused with this nameless inward gazing dread. Possession's tailspin begins early and never stops until it thuds to the pavement with a never-effective "Little House on the Prairie" shot of a little girl running along a verdant hill.

It's tempting to attribute the leaden weight of cliche in Possession to some kind of wicked LaBute barb about the zombie-march of most modern romances, but I fear that the film is deadly serious in its Harlequin intentions. It is easily the director's lowest-aspiring piece, a miserable bit of landscape pornography bound to a somehow more miserable pair of sweaty romances with a ridiculous mystery subplot that completely fails to distract from the picture's shapeless awfulness. Although I find LaBute's films to be misanthropic, occasionally difficult to watch, and sometimes bollocks, I have never until Possession found one to be boring and trite.

-Walter Chaw

© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.

Published: August 16, 2002

SPLICEDwire

LaBUTE FINDS HIS HEART

"POSSESSION"

Review by Rob Blackwelder

Opened: Friday, Friday, August 16, 2002

*** [3 out of 4 stars]

Famously caustic writer-director balances passionate period romance, alienated modern love in 'Possession'

Interweaving two hindrance-hurdling love stories that share a literary connection but take place more than a century apart, director Neil LaBute has taken another large and confident step into an unexpected genre with gratifying results.

"Possession," which is lovingly but sometimes loosely adapted from A.S. Byatt's novel of the same name, follows the germinating romance between two relationship-reluctant academics as they in turn follow a trail of evidence revealing a passionate secret affair between two Victorian poets.

A wild departure from LaBute's previous films -- the caustic, even cruel social satires "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors," and the upbeat black comedy "Nurse Betty" -- this effort has the melodic trappings of a Merchant-Ivory romance. But it's also a perceptive musing on what has and hasn't changed between the two time periods in the emotional, practical and sometimes prohibitive logistics of love.

In present day, the picture stars LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart as Roland Michell, a charmingly cocky, brusque and scruffy American scholar in London on a fellowship to study a celebrated Victorian poet named Randolph Henry Ash. His startling discovery of a love letter the married and famously faithful Ash wrote to a mistress -- a letter the brazen Roland surreptitiously sneaks out of a dusty academic library -- leads him to Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), a fastidious young British professor who is researching the life of Ash's suspected lover, another Victorian poet named Christabel LaMotte.

At first Maud won't have a bit of it, well aware both Ash's reputation and the fact LaMotte quietly lived with a lover of her own, a woman painter. But persuaded by Roland to follow up on a clue, together they sniff out a stash of passionate, 1860s correspondence between the two poets hidden in the manor where LaMotte once lived.

As the scholars follow a trail of written evidence across England, the thrill of their quest and its potential significance begins to wear down their mutual modern cynicism toward love, and a complicated, cautious romantic chemistry begins to form between them. Retracing the steps of two lovers that each of them are devoted to as academics kindles a skeptical desire for each other.

Meanwhile, the discoveries they make about the liaisons between Ash and LaMotte are played out in a parallel timeline featuring the underrated and brilliant Jeremy Northam ("Gosford Park," "An Ideal Husband") and Jennifer Ehle ("Sunshine," "Wilde"). In a full-court-press of warmly melodramatic period flavor, the two poets elude 19th Century social mores and constrictions to be together in what becomes a fervent, ultimately tragic but slightly hopeful romance.

LaBute demonstrates a strong command of cinematic language, seamlessly marrying an elegant, velvety visual signature in the 19th Century scenes with the completely modern style of his present-day story, which includes energetic tracking shots and a tangy sense of humor. As Roland and Maud literally follow in the footsteps of Ash and LaMotte, the director cleverly transitions between the two periods by panning from the past to the present across the same room or showing the poets leaving a location by train, passing over a trestle just as the academics arrive there in a car passing under that same trestle, 100-plus years later.

The biggest departure LaBute and his script collaborators --- David Henry Hwang ("M. Butterfly") and Laura Jones ("Portrait of a Lady," Angela's Ashes") -- made from Byatt's book was to recast Roland as an American. The change has been denounced in advance by fans, but it provides an extra, entertaining contrast between the unorthodox scholar and his musty, literally old-school environment. It also inspires sparks and additional obstacles between the modern lovers that give the film great texture.

Eckhart does a sublime job of exposing Roland's inner sensitivity that is deeply affected by Ash's poetry while embodying his personality as a brash, unshaven, sometime crude all-American guy most comfortable in worn-out T-shirts. As Maud, Paltrow finds all kinds of new nuances to the polished, upper-class Brit persona she seems born to play, despite being an American herself.

The chemistry between Roland and Maud is very well played by these two fine actors. You can feel the romantic vines intertwining as they spend time together. They're connecting -- often against their better judgement and with a lot of resistance -- in a way that make it harder and harder for them to pull apart.

The relationship between Ash and LaMotte is more stirring, but not as well defined. Although this may be deliberate since our entry into their lives is understood largely through the eyes of our modern heroes, who can only draw conclusions from what they read in the letters between their 19th Century counterparts.

A few scenes in "Possession" ring false, especially when it comes to a subplot about glory-seeking rival scholars who are willing to become literal grave robbers to profit from Roland and Maud's findings. But the film never stops providing new and enticing discoveries, right up to the very end -- and that is the crux of the movie's appeal.

Reel.com

*** 1/2 [3 1/2 stars out of 4]

For English majors, A.S. Byatt's novel Possession is the holy grail. Besides combining numerous different writing styles -- epic poems, fairy tales, letters, diary entries, and others -- Byatt also tells a corker of a mystery about two researchers uncovering an affair between a pair of 19th-century poets. In a text that is so much about the written word, then, it's surprising how kinetic and entertaining Neil LaBute's adaptation (with co-writers Laura Jones and David Henry Hwang) is. Though LaBute is unable to tease out all of Byatt's themes -- an impossible task -- this literate, intelligent film is very faithful to its origins.

Like The French Lieutenant's Woman, Possession is a tale of two romances, one from the Victorian era and one from the present day. American post-grad student Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is in England investigating the life of poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam). In the London Library's Special Collections, he discovers some handwritten letters to an unknown woman, presumably not the author's wife. One note mentions a dinner party, and further sleuthing leads to the guest list for that particular gathering. Culling through the names, Roland alights on a slightly obscure poet and fairy-tale writer named Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle) as Ash's possible addressee.

Needing further proof, Roland turns to Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), an icy young professor who has studied LaMotte's life and also happens to be her distant relative. Though skeptical of the suggestion of an affair between the two poets, since LaMotte is widely considered to have been in a long-term relationship with a painter named Blanche Glover (Lena Headey), Maud agrees to help.

In these early scenes, LaBute tries a bit too hard to keep things moving by showing Roland scooting down dusty library stacks or bantering too obviously with a competitive cohort named Fergus Wolff (Toby Stephens). However, when the enthusiastic researcher links up with Maud, Possession becomes extremely entertaining. A lengthy scene where the pair discovers and reads a cache of letters written by Ash and LaMotte is wonderfully cinematic, with the action shifting back and forth in time as the events in the writings take actual form.

While Roland and Maud read about the incendiary passion between the two writers, their own similar feelings arise. As their search for clues continues and their romantic relationship develops, the film virtually races to its finish with the discovery of more secrets, a few tragedies, and even a grave-robbing in the dark of night. Along the way, there's a thematic investigation into the difficulties of love in both eras. As Maud puts it, "Men and women -- we can't seem to help but pull each other apart."

With all of these thematic balls to juggle in a movie under two hours long, LaBute shouldn't be faulted too much for dropping one now and then. The modern-day love story isn't quite as involving as the one between the two poets because there's not enough character development of Roland and Maud. The former claims that he has had several relationships go bad but never offers any details, and the latter is afraid of being consumed by love but doesn't divulge the reasons why. It also doesn't help that Eckhart, with his muscular stature and frat-boy demeanor, is somewhat unbelievable as an expert in 19th-century poetry. Ehle and Northam, on the other hand, are perfectly matched and convey their characters' romantic intensity in the few scenes they have together.

Though the book's fans will notice that some subsidiary characters are missing -- and the final revelation, which was perfectly realized by Byatt, seems too dramatically convenient on-screen -- Possession gets almost everything else right. The script effortlessly shifts between past and present, with splendid moments where the camera pans from one time-frame to the other in a single shot, and Jean-Yves Escoffier's sumptuous cinematography brings both eras vibrantly to life. If Byatt's novel is a savory read for litterateurs, LaBute's film is an equivalent gift to summer moviegoers starved for elegant entertainment.

-- ROD ARMSTRONG

Film Journal International

A couple of modern scholars relive the love affair of two Victorian poets. The sumptuous production, double romance, and hypnotic acting by Jennifer Ehle and Jeremy Northam should draw a popular audience. But the slimmed-down adaptation makes this a Possession-lite.

Critic: Erica Abeel

http://www.filmjournal.com/Article.cfm/PageID/78684323

Much of the book's rich texture is planed away. The need for compression has blurred crucial plot points. And LaBute imposes on the material his idiosyncratic view of sexual politics. These cavils aside, the movie is a guilty pleasure, like chocolate truffles. The handsome actors, their sizzling chemistry, the lush lensing of Jean Yves Escoffier, the costume design by Jenny Beavan (of Gosford Park and Howards End), and the doomy romantic score by Gabriel Yared (The English Patient) make the film a feast for the senses.

It traces two parallel love stories, one set in Victorian times, the second in contemporary England. Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is an American scholar in London studying the work of Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam). Roland miraculously stumbles on two amorous letters from Ash (who was supposedly happily married) to fellow Victorian poet Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). The find sends Roland to the door of Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), an expert on LaMotte, an independent proto-feminist who was involved with the painter Blanche Glover (Lena Headey). When Roland and Maud discover a further cache of letters penned by the poets, they set out to retrace a four-week journey the lovers took a century earlier. Since Maud and Roland are both emotional cripples with intimacy issues ('All relationships are doomed,' Maud proclaims), we know their own journey will echo the earlier romance.

The action weaves fluidly back and forth between the literary sleuthing of the two scholars in the present and a dramatization of the past events they're speculating about. Locked in a companionate marriage, Ash can't resist Ehle's LaMotte--nor can we--and the siren call of passion. Reinventing the epistolary romance, the film cleverly tracks their growing desire through the device of flowery letters spoken aloud. But reckless passion exacts its price: LaMotte's betrayal of Blanche provokes the woman's watery suicide a la Virginia Woolf. And though LaMotte and Ash have a child, a cruel misunderstanding drives them apart and snuffs any future rapprochement.

Running parallel to the past love story is the alternating attraction/repulsion of the two young scholars as they hunt down clues about their subjects. The film cleverly explores a paradox: The Victorian lovers, hedged in by the restraints of the age, were freer and more available to passion, while the modern, unfettered couple is stymied by doubts, suspicion and a fear of getting burned. Sadly, though, the Maud-Roland business turns predictable, as they deteriorate into a case study in male/female hostility, reflecting LaBute's habitual bias. Roland, the gross-out American with five o'clock shadow and a grotty jacket, initially horrifies the ice queen Maud, with her perfect chignon and impeccable pedigrees. (She's even distantly related to her heroine LaMotte.) And we know, long before they do, that though they hate love as well as each other, in the final scene--in a classic LaBute moment of female submission--she'll unpin that scholarly chignon for him. LaBute and his co-writers also perpetrate such lines as Roland's 'I want to see if there's an 'us' in you and me.'

Still, the movie is consistently entertaining. You get two love affairs for the price of one. The burnished Victorian settings are evoked to perfection, and the poets' love idyll is to swoon over. The sweeping shots of Yorkshire fields and coast camouflage the plot holes (though some may assign this movie to the genre of the dramatized travelogue). A regular in LaBute's films, Aaron Eckhart, though an electric actor, seems more corporate shark than scholar. And it's hard to imagine an academic like the silken-voiced, regally bewitching Paltrow. Most satisfying are Ehle and Northam, who seem magically to emanate from an earlier century, and convey--in a touch, a glance, or fingers unlacing stays--what a novel might manage in 50 pages.

MovieHabit.com

Possession
review by Marty Mapes

Neil Labute is a director to watch. His debut film, In the Company of Men, was a horrifying yet fascinating portrait of a sociopathic woman-hater. His next two films, Your Friends & Neighbors and Nurse Betty, both had a dark, incisive edge. Now he's releasing Possession, a romantic drama that escapes -- mostly -- the black hole of Labute's cynicism and sarcasm.

Mystery Missive
The versatile and talented Aaron Eckhart plays Roland Mitchell, an American academic studying literature in London. The story begins when Roland finds a handwritten letter in a library book that hasn't been opened for a century. The letter appears to be a genuine missive from the great poet Randolph Henry Ash, whose life is being celebrated at the museum where Roland is working.

The shocking letter hints that the notoriously faithful Ash (brought back to life by Jeremy Northam) may have had a secret lover after all. Rather than turn the letter in to the academic authorities, Roland keeps it for a while, hoping to figure out the whole story before he goes public.

Roland suspects that Ash's mystery woman may be Christable LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), a painter and poet contemporary with Ash. Roland seeks out an expert on LaMotte, one Maud Bailey played with a suitable British chill by Gwynneth Paltrow. Roland's found letter interests Maud, and together they set out to discover where this letter will lead them.

The movie's hook (and the book's too -- Possession is based on a novel by A.S. Byatt), is that as Ash and LaMotte's romance is revealed, so develops Roland and Maud's romance.

The Good, The Bad, and No Ugly
Research is exciting. Your average Homer Simpson doesn't understand this, but Labute shows that curiosity is an itch that demands to be scratched. Roland and Maud are two world experts in their respective narrow fields, and the possibility that they might uncover something nobody has known about for a hundred years is a big thrill. Believe it or not, that thrill carries through the screen and into the audience.

Murder mysteries work on the same principle; a good mystery unravels slowly, piece by piece, until at some point the big picture becomes evident and our curiosity is sated. It's particularly refreshing that this mystery is an investigation into an illicit romance, and not a murder.

The biggest drawback to this otherwise satisfying story is Labute's own style. Try as he might, he can't quite shake out the negativity that permeated his previous films. It doesn't show up as negativity, but as something bordering on sarcasm. Labute adopts each piece of the story too enthusiastically, and I'm never sure whether the emotion is genuine or fake. The British are too British ("You're that American who's over here."). Maud's current prick of a boyfriend is too much a prick. The eager American is too eager ("I want to know what happened!"). Is Labute truly this enthusiastic or is he testing our gullibility?

The emotional style comes through visually as well. Labute borrows a technique from Lone Star, where the camera pans from the modern story in, say, a bar, to another corner of the bar where it's 1950. One time when Labute used this trick I didn't recognize it because his picture of the past was too pretty to be real. He pans from an modern automobile to a perfectly-restored train. The train is so picturesque I assumed it was some hobbyist's pet project, operated on weekends for the tourists. I never thought it could be an actual train operating during the late Industrial Revolution. Labute's view of the past (as the setting for his romance) is so idealized -- so far from ugly reality -- that even the trains aren't allowed a speck of grease or soot.

Let Yourself Go
Had I not known about Labute's penchant for black comedy, I may have been more receptive to the romance in Possession. In fact, there are moments when the movie works so well it's impossible not to get caught up.

If you can let yourself go at the movies, if you can let yourself get pulled into the excitement, then Possession will be a good bit of entertainment for you. The pace is great; Possession never seems too slow or too long. But it only works if you check your cynicism and irony at the door.

by Cynthia Fuchs
PopMatters Film and TV Editor

"They say that women change. 'Tis so, but you are ever constant." So rhapsodizes Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam), composing a letter to his lover, fellow poet Christabel La Motte (Jennifer Ehle), as he strides across a lovely, sun-kissed field, walking stick in hand.

'Tis the opening scene in Possession. Based on A.S. Byatt's popular 1990 novel, Neil LaBute's movie parallels Ash and Christabel's brief, thrilling romance of 1859, with that of two scholars who find their love letters, some 140 years later (with intimate, precious turns of phrases: "I am a creature of my pen; my pen is the best part of me"). At first, Christabel expert Maud (Gwyneth Paltrow, playing British, again) rejects the idea that her girl would have strayed from her companion, a painter named Blanche (Lena Headey), at least until Blanche's suicide. The Ash scholar, a brash American (is there any other kind?) named Roland (Aaron Eckhart), thinks otherwise. Arriving on Maud's doorstep with a couple of Ash's undiscovered letters, pilfered from the London Library ("I sort of stole them"), Roland suggests that they go digging. Maud can't resist. Soon, as the academics literally follow their subjects' footsteps (traveling to their trysting spot, sleeping in their trysting bed), they too fall in love.

This outline might sound a little mushy for Neil LaBute, whose In the Company of Men (1997), Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), and Nurse Betty (2000) all deal, in various ways, with infidelity, deception, grief, and meanness. But Possession, as its title suggests, is exactly in line with these prior investigations, looking at power and desire more than love, or perhaps more accurately, looking at the ways that power and desire are camouflaged as love. Not only is Christabel already involved when she meets Ash, so is he. In fact, he's married when he meets Christabel, though not especially happily; the Mrs. (Holly Aird) is evidently a bit chilly. Moreover, Maud is herself otherwise attached, to another fellow scholar, Fergus (Toby Stephens), who is, admittedly, a bit creepy on first look.

More interestingly, the supposed "romance" throughout Possession is darker, more prickly, than that first sunny field shot might lead you to expect. And the film makes sure -- by cutting between the two evolving relationships, between eras -- to illustrate that the ostensibly "modern" moment is at least as constrained and difficult as the earlier one when it comes to gender roles and sexual desires. Consider, for starters, Ash's generalization that "women" are inconstant (much as it is ostensibly contradicted by his experience with his much-adored lover). A similar sentiment might be articulated by Jason Patric's Cary, the violent misogynist in Your Friends & Neighbors, though he'd likely use much uglier language.

But ignorant-guy stereotypes are easy targets (and brutal as Cary is, his bluntness is also vaguely less disturbing than Ben Stiller's terminally fuming Jerry or even Eckhart's self-deluding Barry). Possession takes a somewhat trickier route, focusing on the anxieties that are barely concealed by such fronting. Art, of course, is one means of fronting, one not immediately available to most of LaBute's other characters (unless you consider murder an art, as did Morgan Freeman's elegant hitman in Nurse Betty). Here, Ash uses his art to work out his emotional life, to the point that he goes down in history best known for a series of later-period love poems, ostensibly dedicated to his wife; these initially lead Roland and Maud to assume he could never be involved in a secret affair, before they piece it together.

Scenes showing Ash's interactions with Christabel suggest that she is the object of his aesthetic as well as corporeal passions. She appears to him as the very embodiment of what the Victorians called "The Woman Question," an independent-minded, vivacious, and sexy intellectual, reminiscent of writers like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Austen, the Brontes, and Eliza Lynn Linton, whose work addressed social inequalities and changing prospects in frank and often brilliant ways. Still, much like her counterparts today, Christabel must contend with a presumption of male privilege. As she puts it to Ash on their first meeting, "You show us such small regard on the page." Ash responds to his about-to-be lover with his own self-starring mini-drama: "You cut me, madam." And she comes back with wit that suggests his game is wasted: "I only meant to scratch."

He's smitten. And who wouldn't be? Christabel is a remarkable character, seductive and endearing, vaguely recalling the resilient and inventive Betty (Renee Zellweger), but at the same time, more self-possessed. Her decision to deceive Blanche is, we might guess, not taken easily, and when she does confess her secret, the results are devastating. That said, she does take the decision, and the movie doesn't spend too much time with the distraught Blanche, which may say as much about viewer/reader desires as about anything else -- the film focuses on the illicit romance, as do the primary readers in the film, Maud and Roland.

And this is Possession's most notably odd tack, its focus on the academics, that is, people who read for a living. This underscores that the film is more about reading -- as a process of self-discovery and connecting -- than about its frankly standard-issue love stories. Like the film's readers/viewers, Maud and Roland come with their own agendas, at first to support their ideas about "their" poets, then to find something "new" to advance their careers, and eventually, to see in Ash and Christabel a reflection of their own evolving needs, to see themselves, to have their divergent understandings of poetic "love" affirmed (she believes; no surprise, he does not, looking instead to prove that "Mr. Perfect Husband had this Shakespearean Dark Lady thing going").

Once they're caught up in the process, they start to doubt their abilities, not only their ostensible investigative skills, but more importantly, their analytical facilities. And that means, they aren't reading each other well either. Maud does what she can not to fall for her coarse yank companion ("We came to investigate them, not us"), but she gives in at last. Shades of Christabel, describing her infatuation: "Nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed." They're alone in the very seaside room where their subjects did their own consummating. And so, they are consumed and consummate.

In another movie, this would be (or be leading to) the happy ending. Here, however, there's more excavating to do, more pressing of your issues, whwatever they may be. When, in the AM, Roland (a self-described "brush and flush kind of guy") inevitably thinks better of their one night, Maud is put out, flinging his I-can't-commit attitude right back at him, whining, "We're all doomed to just tear each other apart." Roland hits back, using her own earlier confession against her: "So this is the icy pull back part of it?" No, this is the expected moment of revelation (less subtly rendered than in other LaBute films). Roland's insistence on not "understanding" her appears to be his version of male privilege. Vulnerability is bad, fulfillment of desire is good, relationships are ever fraught. And once Gwyneth's eyes start welling up, his cause is surely lost.

Still, there's something amiss in this romance, which almost saves it (really, the mushy stuff is not so interesting, even if it does involve Paltrow in pert outfits). The Victorian lovers have to deal with pregnancy, suicide, and above all, preserving appearances. Maud and Roland are more immediately faced with unanswerable questions: they have fewer obvious structures to follow (or fall back on) and, apparently, more chances to screw up (though, to be fair, Ash and Christabel's own screw ups are considerable, however well intentioned and constrained their actions).

The film's meticulous formalism (it's beautifully shot by Jean Yves Escoffier) allows you, dear reader, to feel some distance, perhaps, some self-possession. See, for instance, the composition when Maud and Roland walk on the beach and assure one another they don't want a "relationship," her face in close up, his bent figure pushed to the back of the frame. In reading such a rich image, you may find what you're looking for -- and several reviewers have found the film's seeming mainstreamness more palatable than the filmmaker's earlier crisp cruelty. Such a response, however, overlooks the essential cruelty of romance -- as a genre, a cultural myth, a mainstream ideal.

While the plot of Possession concerns yearning and fervor, its tone is provocatively detached; LaBute calls it "emotional archeology." The major discovery may be that gender roles and sexual appetites, then and now, are functions of social orders, expectations and needs. These orders don't change much. The question is: do readers?

15 August 2002

'Possession': Literally silly

By Joe Baltake
Sacramento Bee Movie Critic
(Published Aug. 30, 2002)

** [2 stars out of 4]

The pedigree is at least an inch thick on "Possession." Get this: Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow in a Neil LaBute adaptation of A.S. Byatt's 1990 Booker Prize-winning novel. So why is the resulting film so mildly and annoyingly disappointing and, well, just plain silly?

"Possession" is one of those unfortunate films that reverse the usual ideas about theory vs. practice -- the kind that sounds much worse on paper than it plays on screen. It is almost impossible to describe its rather somber and respectful approach to its material -- its overall sincerity -- without making it sound campy and even downright cartoonish.

It would be easy to blame LaBute, hitherto a maker of impressively edgy, unfriendly films ("In the Company of Men," "Your Friends and Neighbors"), as being the wrong director for the project. Sensitivity isn't exactly his hallmark. But, frankly, I can't imagine anyone who could pull off this material -- neither Mike Nichols nor James Ivory -- without looking foolish. It's unfilmable and ready-made for a "Saturday Night Live" parody.

LaBute may be blameless, but his leading man, Aaron Eckhart, isn't. Eckhart is hilariously miscast as Roland Mitchell, a supposedly bookish American who works as a research assistant for the British Museum and who is obsessed with the life and writings of a (fictional) Victorian poet named Randolph Henry Ash, who flourished 125 years earlier. With his studly good looks and perpetual two-day stubble, Eckhart's Roland looks as if he'd be more comfortable at a topless bar. And who knew that spending so much time in the library was conducive to building up one's biceps and giving one great abs?

Actually, on second thought, given that Eckhart is LaBute's house actor and on-screen surrogate -- having appeared in all four of the director's films to date -- maybe we can blame LaBute after all.

Anyway, Roland may be a high-minded academic, but he's not beyond stealing a historical document from a library. Which is exactly what he does when he discovers a moldy old love letter written by Ash to Christabel LaMotte, a budding poet also of his time.

This surprises Roland, given that Ash had an impeccable reputation as a man of high standards and a faithful husband -- and that LaMotte was a lesbian who was equally devoted to her housemate Blanche Glover, who was supposedly LaMotte's muse. This discovery energizes Roland, and he has to share/confirm it.

This brings him -- and us -- to Maud Baily (a very predictable Paltrow, pulling her "Emma"/"Shakespeare in Love"/"Sliding Doors" English accent out of mothballs). Maud is a rather reserved researcher who specializes in gender studies (you heard me) and who is doing research of her own on LaMotte, who happens to be her aunt (er, thrice removed, as Paltrow would say in this movie). Could it be fate? Here we have two scholars doing independent research on two Victorian poets, and it turns out that the two poets were involved romantically. Will history repeat itself?

Is it only a matter of time before Maud and Roland, uneasy allies, go from being colleagues to lovers?

In this story of academia and love, it is only a matter of time before the two stories -- and the two romances -- run parallel to each other. If any of this sounds familiar, it should. Director Karel Reisz and writer Harold Pinter did just about the same thing two decades ago in their 1981 adaptation of John Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman." Only back then, it worked.

LaBute tells his twin stories, separated by two centuries, alternately -- with Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle playing Ash and LaMotte in fussy Merchant Ivory-type flashbacks. (Lena Heady essays the role of Blanche.) The point is that Maud and Roland's relationship comes to mirror the doomed one shared by Ash and LaMotte, but the scenes with Paltrow and Eckhart never amount to much, largely because 1) Eckhart isn't the least bit convincing, 2) he and Paltrow have next to no chemistry and 3) they have no chemistry largely because all they do in their scenes is bend over old letters and read to each other.

The result is a film that could pass as either an "After School Special" for adults or a "Love Story" for the new millennium -- or a closeted comedy.

Possession (2002)

movie review by Bob Bloom, Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN)

3 stars out of 4.

Possession is a gentle literary mystery fueled by strong performances by a quartet of actors.

The story begins with brash American scholar Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) who, on a fellowship in London to study Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, accidentally stumbles upon some heretofore unknown letters by the poet.

Mitchell, theorizing the letters were intended were another poet, Christabel LaMotte, seeks out Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), a by-the-book English academic and LaMotte expert.

The two combine forces and discover a cache of love letters exchanged between Ash and LaMotte, a finding that -- with further proof -- would be a monumental achievement in literary academia.

Roland and Maud begin tracing the lives of the poets, traveling across England and to France. As they learn more about the once-secret relationship between Ash and LaMotte, their own emotional connection begins to blossom.

OK, so this isn't XXX. Nary a gunshot nor explosion is heard throughout Possession, yet the story, based on a novel by A.S. Byatt, entices you. The more Roland and Maud learn about Ash and LaMotte, the more you want to know about them.

Possession flashes back to show us the love story of Ash and LaMotte, beautifully played by Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle. Their actions accentuate and expand upon the findings by Maud and Roland.

This odyssey comes full circle when the modern couple finally unearth the last piece of the puzzle, and Maud uncovers an astounding detail about her heritage.

Possession is a lush, slowly-paced story that leisurely unveils its secrets about Ash and LaMotte, and also takes its time developing the relationship between the practical Maud and the impulsive Roland.

Possession is an outing for people who luxuriate in words. The flashbacks to Ash and LaMotte, as voice-overs quote from their letters, will captivate and impress.

The four leads are masterful, but it is Northam and Ehle who hold your hearts. Northam has the intense look of the poet, his eyes burning, his soul in torment.

Ehle is a treasure. You are drawn to her eyes, which show love, humor and defiance as well as pain and sadness. When she is on screen, she commands your attention.

Paltrow again demonstrates why she is more English than most British actors, displaying her impeccable accent. Her Maud is brusque, straight and determined, yet underneath she shows glimpses of a woman ready for companionship.

Eckhart is boyish and charming as the dervish-like Yank, whose spontaneity masks a scholar's mind.

The screenplay by David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones and Neil LaBute holds your attention, while LaBute's direction keeps you moving seamlessly from one story to the other.

Yes, that Neil LaBute, the cynic responsible for In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, as well as the splendid Nurse Betty. With the collaboration of director of photography Jean Yves Escoffier, he has ably melded two worlds into one.

The melancholy-tinged score by Gabriel Yared helps set the mood for both periods -- the polite and repressed mid-19th century Victorian England as well as its modern, faster-paced, more open descendant.

You will find Possession a most cozy experience, like a good book with which you can curl up in front of the fireplace.

Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bloomjc@yahoo.com or at bobbloom@iquest.net. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at www.jconline.com by clicking on golafayette.
Bloom's reviews also appear on the Web at the Rottentomatoes Web site, www.rottentomatoes.com and at the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom

movie review by Jim Chastain, Norman Transcript

Rating: (B+)

POSSESSION: POETRY IN MOTION

"There is no such thing as a poet anymore."

This is one of many meaningful observations in "Possession," the period romance from Warner Brothers, Focus Features, and writer/director Neil LaBute ("Nurse Betty" and "In the Company of Men"). Although this observation is an obvious overstatement--for there are still good poets around--it also has more than a hint of painful truth.

Simply put, poetry (and particularly romantic poetry) is not what it once was. It is, arguably, less read, less desired, less passionate, less clear, and less relevant in these postmodern days than it once was. And why is that?

"Possession" studies this and other related questions by contrasting the Victorian age-- with all of its social mores, mystery, repressed desire, and consequentially splendid romantic verse-- with these contemporary post-Freudian times, when love is seen as scientifically understandable formula, the chaotic product of random psychological data producing chemical and biological reactions, and love poetry is just something you were forced to read in high school.

In Victorian times--supposedly--sexuality, desire, and the fascinating dynamics between men and women were a taboo subject. Such things were not spoken of in public, but they were contemplated with great passion and intensity in literature, theater, poetry, and in the private thoughts of authors, playwrights, and poets.

Today, however, there are no mysteries when it comes to sexual matters; all has been explicitly and repeatedly revealed. The average relationship has a shelf life of about five years. Men and women work together, side-by-side. Everything you ever wanted to know about sexuality--at least what you didn't learn in college or by trial and error--is readily available on MTV, pay-per-view, advertisements, or your home computer.

And so, "Possession," which was based upon the Booker Prize winning novel by A.S. Byatt, compares and contrasts these two eras by looking closely at two romances that are separated by 150 or so years. First, there is the passionate, secretive romance between Victorian poets Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) and Christable LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). And second, there is the angst-ridden contemporary romance between American researcher/closet poet Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) and Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), a cool, collected and somewhat frigid English academician.

Randolph Ash was a Victorian speechwriter who suddenly penned some incredible love poems in the middle of his career, poems that resulted in his being named England's poet laureate. All experts agree that the poems were written for Ash's wife. But Roland, who is an unknown Ash expert, is hot on the trail of circumstantial evidence that suggests Ash's poems were actually written for LaMotte, notable for being a brilliant poet, but also a known feminist and lesbian. Roland's research leads him to Maud, who is the LaMotte expert he needs to test his theory.

Collectively, Roland and Maud begin to uncover more and more evidence of a scandalous clandestine relationship between Ash and LaMotte, a romance that was intensely passionate and extremely risky for its day. Ash and LaMotte corresponded secretly and their private thoughts dripped with steamy innuendo.

Meanwhile, Roland and Maud find themselves inspired by this intense Victorian love affair. Working together closely as men and women do these days, they begin to contemplate their feelings for each other. This is a natural opportunity for a fling. However, their unsuccessful relationships have made them cold and suspicious about anything too romantic. Love hurts too much to risk, they say. Neither of them wants a part of it.

"Possession" is an interesting study of love and romance. At first, I was critical of the cold and lifeless relationship between Roland and Maud. But, upon greater reflection, I realized that was exactly the point. Ironically, it is the Victorian age with all of its reserve and secretiveness that produces the more intimate and risk-taking romance. Meanwhile, the contemporary romance between Roland and Maud, which is much more open and honest from the outset, produces a hesitant, defeated product, something that is going through the motions to a certain extent.

"Possession" suggests that mystery breeds passion, that great love poetry is ultimately borne out of pain. That today's poetry is less romantic than it once was because many people do not really believe in love at all. That we are simply too sophisticated to buy into it.

At its core, however, "Possession" suggests that love is real, but, whenever and wherever it is found, it is an extremely risky undertaking. And, consequentially, it is all the more exciting.

Perhaps we are too knowing and angst-ridden these days. I wrote a love poem about it. Tell me what you think.

To Phyllis

If I could comb my hair
And collect all my brain cells
I would put them in a shopping bag
And arrange them so they don't topple over
On my ground beef
And I'd send them to this girl I once loved
Because she dumped me

RATING B plus

© 2002. Jim Chastain II

Possession (2002)

movie review by Victoria Alexander, FilmsInReview.com

That means the characters are going to be writing poetry? Doesn't "Victorian" conjure up images of flowery language, decorum, and no nudity? Where's the audience for that?

Wait. There's another story intertwining it about two modern day academics researching their secret romance. The guy is played by the director's stand-in -- Aaron Eckhart. He's going to take his shirt off. Even though he plays a scholar, he goes to the gym and does 1000 crunches every day.

Eckhart? Didn't he play Julie Roberts's fat neighbor with a bushy beard who took care of her kids?

Erin Brockovich. It was big. He's hot looking now. The icy female academic is going to be played by Gwyneth Paltrow. She'll do another upper-class English accent and wear turtleneck sweaters.

So this is about two poets and two academics?

One of the poets is a lesbian.

I'm only curious about what Jesus did every day. However, there are lots of academics and moviegoers who want to know what literary luminaries like Virginia Woolf did on a certain weekend, where she vacationed, who she went with, and the dinner menu. If you've read Ernest Hemingway's neighbor's memoir -- about the day he helped Papa clean out his boat -- this is the love story for you.

I'm not sure what Neil LaBute found so enchanting about this material or why he wanted to adapt (with David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones) A.S. Byatt's 1990 Booker Prize-winning novel for the screen.

Roland Michell (Eckhart) is big and tall, gorgeous, unshaven, and a working-class scholar whose grooming habits he happily describes as "brush and flush." This is a showcase role for Eckhart (but an awkward bedroom scene sabotages him). He's a slacker-academic studying the life of Queen Victoria's poet laureate, Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam), who was renowned for his love for his wife and as a grand advocate of marital fidelity.

Maud Bailey (Paltrow) is a brilliant English academic obsessed with the smallest details of a distant relative, the lesbian poet Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Nehle). In the British Museum, Roland finds and steals a hand written letter Ash wrote to a lover. Roland and Maud think the letter was meant for LaMotte. They find more letters and read them out loud. Maud also quotes passages from LaMotte's poetry.

The romance between Roland and Maud is somehow supposed to mirror that of the decorous Ash and the wealthy LaMotte. However, morality has loosened considerably during the century that distances the two couples. When Roland and Maud are out hunting down Ash and LaMotte's forbidden month tryst, they agree to spend the night in the same room and bed. They kiss and then Roland backs away. He's been oblivious to the constant eyeing by a female co-worker and now lovely Maud appears willing. Two smart, beautiful, unattached people with the same compulsive interests -- what's wrong? For Ash and LaMotte it's about morality, hurting Ash's wife, and LaMotte's place in society. For Roland and Maud, it's about what -- harboring past bad relationships and just being uptight?

Let's review: Ash is celebrated for being devotedly married to a woman who is not intimate with him. He falls in love with LaMotte, who is living with a disturbed, possessive lesbian painter. It's no surprise things go terribly wrong. Roland doesn't seem interested in women and declines Maud's sexual invitation, but he likes her hair. Maud presents herself as emotionally rigid with sleek platinum hair in a severe bun. A former beau/current colleague identifies her as troublesome. Embarrassed by events, or pressured by them, Roland makes love to Maud.

POSSESSION is a romance.

Victoria Alexander can be reached by visiting www.filmsinreview.com

Possession (2002)

movie review by Rose 'Bams' Cooper, 3BlackChicks Review

Rating: (2/5)

Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002

Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/2002rev...possession.html

I reckon the best thing I can say about POSSESSION is, it's kind of like THE RED VIOLIN - without most of the interesting bits.

THE STORY (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**)
Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) is a Fellow from America and researcher of Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash; Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a British academic who specializes in the life of Victorian poet Christabel LaMotte. Mitchell and Bailey reluctantly come together during the centennial celebration of Ash's love poems to his wife Ellen. The duo aim to find out if there is a connection between the two poets, after Mitchell surreptitiously finds hand-written letters from Ash that suggests that Ash and LaMotte may have shared more than an abiding love of the written word.

Meanwhile, back in the early 1900's...through a series of flashbacks, Ash (Jeremy Northam) and LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle) are brought to life, caught up in the tangled web they weaved. Shortly after meeting the stunning Christabel, Ash is ready to possess her wholly. But not so fast: there's Ash's wife Ellen (Holly Aird) to consider - not to mention LaMotte's female lover, Blanche (Lena Headey). And back to the future, Mitchell and Bailey have issues of their own to contend with, including Bailey's on-again/off-again lover - and jealous fellow academic - Fergus Wolff (Toby Stephens).

THE UPSHOT
Peanut butter and chocolate. Sunshine and blue skies. Mysteries about early 1900's poets and moviegoers. Some things go naturally together...and some things, don't.

[Insert standard disclaimer about how Fillum Purists who get huffy about how I dare criticize Art Flicks, can bite me.]

Here's the thing: taken separately, the two stories in POSSESSION might've been a lot more interesting. I could certainly see art film aficionados enjoying the story of two star-cross'd poets, doomed in their love by bad timing, fate, and somewhat different sexual orientations. And even if the story Paltrow and Eckhart were stuck in seemed contrived, I'm sure someone could've written a tangible, interesting film they could appear in together. Given a more feasible setting in which to work, they'd make at least a serviceable duo.

POSSESSION was not that feasible setting. The silliness of the modern-day storyline dragged down the beauty of the poets' storyline, to the point where neither was worth staying with to the bitter end. Every time Eckhart's character started getting giddy about Solving! The! Mystery!, he reminded me of Freddy from the old SCOOBY DOO cartoons [bite me again: I was a kid. I didn't know any better].

To be sure, the main actors involved - Paltrow, Eckhart, Northam and Ehle - gave it a valiant try, with Eckhart and especially the radiant Ehle standing out amongst the foursome for me. And with his director's hat firmly in place, Neil LaBute succeeded in making 1900's England look and feel like a place where romance, forbidden or no, could bloom.

But there's that thing with the flashforwards again. Had this movie started, and stayed, in the past, I'd doubt that there would've been derisive snickers from the audience whenever co-writer LaBute reached awkwardly to the present to concoct a tenuous-to-the-point-of-opaqueness connection. Call it a hunch, but I don't think that was the planned reaction.

BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE
Yes, I know it's based on a novel, and no, I haven't read that novel, and no, I have no *intentions* on reading that novel. All I know is that, as a movie, POSSESSION failed to grab me.

POSSESSION rating: yellowlight

Rose "Bams" Cooper
Webchick and Editor,
3BlackChicks Review
Entertainment Reviews With Flava!
Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002

POSSESSION

Review by Mark Dujsik

*** [3 out of 4 stars]

Possession asks if intellectuals are ever romantic. The film is a romance to be sure, taking a story of repressed love between two poets of the past and making it the impetus for the blossoming romance between two academics in the present day. There's poetry abounding, but even romantic poetry has the pretense of an attempt to rationalize the irrational. There are no huge, melodramatic gestures of love here -- there's no room for that among the literati. Most emotions are left unanswered by psychoanalysis of fears and past experiences or the desire to remain "proper" and, once the romance is consummated, guilt -- but without regret of the affair itself -- consumes the participants. While we're used to love stories in which people are brought together, Possession is more about how these sets of lovers are kept apart. The ultimate fate of one romance is known from the start, but the real romance lies in wondering if the other pair will heed the mistakes of the past or suffer a worse fate in the pain of regretting what could have been.

Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is an American who has come to England to help with research involving poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam), the poet laureate to Queen Victoria and the subject of a centenary celebration of his love poems. The fervor of Ash's devotees is extraordinary, inducing one person to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a toothpick at an Ash themed auction. So it must be extremely difficult for Roland (and the audience) to believe that letters written in Ash's own hand to an unknown woman were sitting, waiting to be discovered in one of Ash's original manuscripts at a library in London. The letters could be enough evidence to change history, as most scholars believe that Ash wrote his poetry for and was faithful to one woman his entire life. Realizing the importance of the serendipitous find, Roland "borrows" the letters, keeps their existence secret, and starts investigating their meaning. His research eventually leads him to Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), an expert on poet Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), and the two find themselves irresistibly drawn to unraveling the mystery of this overlooked affair.

Although the catalyst for the entire story is a rather questionable one, the film proves itself worthy of suspending disbelief. The modern day scholars must find clues not only in correspondences between Ash and LaMotte but also in their poetry. Beyond their artistic value, there are some real-life applications of the metaphorical language of the lovers' writings. They're leads -- evidence -- and the mystery they'll help solve is fascinating. A mysterious metaphor is actually a description of a cavernous waterfall, which helps Roland and Maud determine the location of the lovers when written evidence has them lost, and a poem about a doll hiding something takes a literal meaning at LaMotte's ancient residence. As the scholars travel across Europe to uncover the past, flashbacks allow us to see the big picture. LaBute seamlessly incorporates transitions between the past and the present. As a scene between Ash and LaMotte concludes, oftentimes the camera slowly pans over to reveal Roland and Maud in the same room, reinforcing the connection between these couples.

What the two couples share most is the preference to talk instead of feel. There's a strange irony to the scenario presented here. Ash is noted for having some of the most sentimentally romantic poetry (with some hints of misogyny, which don't seem to go together, but that's what the scholars say), and yet in real life, his character is barely on speaking terms with his wife Ellen (Holly Aird), not to mention the fact that they aren't physical intimate in any respect. LaMotte's poetry fits a bit more in rhythm with her character. Her naivete is reflected in her fantasy writing, but her ideas regarding the treatment of women in literature and society (slightly hinted at in an early conversation between Ash and LaMotte) don't hint at the possibility of her having an affair with Ash. What brings these two together? The question is impossible to answer and makes the poets' relationship, along with the restrained performances of Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle, all the more alluring. It's understandable why it would entice the pair of researchers in the present, and the underlying and irresistible chemistry between Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart is tangible from the start.

Possession is an intriguing look at a fairly atypical romance that avoids most of the preconceptions about what a love story should be like. At first, the quirks are difficult to grasp, but LaBute and his fellow screenwriters David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones (working from the novel by A.S. Byatt) manage to delve into this scholarly culture. The film is literate but never boring. And even though the poetry is not always too poetic (Ash somehow gets away with saying, "You take my breath away") and a competing academic seems a poor attempt to add conflict (he does get points for attempting to recite poetry before digging up a grave), there's no denying the film's intelligence and heady appeal.

Copyright © 2002 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved.

Website: Movie Parables

A MOVIE PARABLE: POSSESSION

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

With the summer movie scene having been filled with spider men, scorpion kings, mob killers and tattooed spies, it may be time to back off the testosterone a little and offer up a Victorian era romance for those possessing gentler natures. Possession is just what the love doctor ordered for it features not one romance but two.

Based on A.S. Byatt's 1990 novel, Possession is set in modern day England and centers around a discovery made by Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart, Erin Brockovich), an American scholar struggling to find his place within the world of institutionalized London academia. His expertise involves the life and work of Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam, The Winslow Boy), poet laureate to Queen Victoria and now remembered most for his love poems written to his devoted wife.

When Michell finds a letter from Ash which suggests an illicit affair, he is driven to unearth more clues which may shed light upon an unknown aspect of the great poet who, up until this time, had been thought to be the epitome of a faithful husband.

More shocking are the indications that his love partner may have been the Victorian poet Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle, Sunshine), well known to be ahead of her time in her pro-feminist, lesbian beliefs. To aid him in his efforts to dig deeper into this historical find, Michell contacts a renowned LaMotte scholar, Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow, Shallow Hal).

Roland and Maud begin retracing the steps of the Victorian lovers, uncovering more and more evidence of the love affair. As they do, they too begin to feel the stirrings of passion becoming stronger between them and harder to resist.

Director Neil LaBute (Nurse Betty) overlaps the modern and the Victorian tales so that one scene, played in the past, smoothly blends with the next scene which is played in the present. It is a convention that works... to a degree.

The tryst between Ash and LaMotte is far more interesting and attention-grabbing than the modern day fumbling attempts at love made by Michell and Bailey. At least the couple in the past were dealing with significant and understandable issues that kept them apart. This made them tragic figures. The modern couple just manage to stumble over their own insecurities and fears. This made them appear foolish.

The acting is top notch with admirable performances by Paltrow, Eckhart, and Northam. Jennifer Ehle is marvelous as Christabel LaMotte, portraying the reserved manner of a Victorian lady, coupled with the passion of a woman in love, overlaid with the rebellious spirit of a revolutionary. She is wonderful in the complex role.

What message does the film send, I wonder? According to the production notes, the director believes that the characters discover that "love is worth whatever chaos it may create." I must respectfully disagree.

While it is true that love is worth whatever price is required, chaos is not valid tender. There is a whole chapter in the Scriptures devoted to love and its characteristics (1 Corinthians 13). Chaos does not fit within the given definition.

"Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth." 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 (NRSV)

Possession romanticizes an act which is hardly romantic. Infidelity may be many things but romantic is not among them. Rather, infidelity is an indulgence to a fantasy. It is a fantasy which will eventually lead to pain and suffering if we choose to pursue it.

--Michael Elliott--
c/o Movie Parables

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film: 8
[8 out of 10]

Secret love shows ability to withstand test of time

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(August 30, 2002) -- There's a certain irony in a romantic film entitled Possession when no one among the film's two couples truly possesses anyone. Complications abound.

Ah, but they all possess a secret. They also possess great passion. Both elements make for enthralling storytelling.

Possession is adapted by filmmaker Neil LaBute from the popular 1990 Booker Prize-winning novel by A.S. Byatt and tells two love stories a century apart.

In the contemporary saga, Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) is an American literary researcher who has come to England to investigate the life and times of Queen Victoria's poet laureate, Randolph Henry Ash.

In a dusty library one day, he discovers two rare letters caught between the pages of a seldom-opened book. They're from Ash, expressing love for a woman -- and Mitchell is convinced she was not Ash's wife. In fact, he thinks they were written to a lesser-known 19th-century poet named Christabel LaMotte.

Mitchell hides his discovery until he can prove his case, especially because it goes against the conventional wisdom that Ash was faithful to his wife. Even worse, Mitchell's finding occurs just as London's literary types are celebrating the centennial of Ash's famous, much-loved poems to his wife.

To help identify Ash's secret lover, Mitchell meets with English researcher Maud Bailey, an authority on LaMotte. Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) is initially skeptical, but eventually sees that Mitchell is on to something.

The restrained Bailey finds herself increasingly drawn to Mitchell's enthusiastic attitude about his work but challenged by his contrary reluctance to become romantically involved.

The Victorian era romance, of course, is between Ash (Jeremy Northam) and LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), and is depicted in smartly constructed flashbacks. Under LaBute's precise direction, the century is often bridged within a scene, through camera turns or cleverly linked action.

The cautious Ash-LaMotte affair feels the pressure of Ash's upstanding reputation, his much-admired marriage and the social restrictions of the Victorian era, along with LaMotte's apparent romance with a fiery young woman who shares her home.

Ash and LaMotte are forced to suppress their deep passion in furtive but potent notes, quick glances and brief gestures. They share only a few moments of bliss as well as a long-held secret. The way the secret touches Bailey in the modern age is one of the film's many pleasures.

At first glance, LaBute would seem an unlikely candidate to direct an English literary romance because his previous films have all been edgy American independents -- In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors and Nurse Betty. But LaBute's affinity for sexual politics plays into the romances of both eras.

LaBute regular Eckhart is ideally cast as the eager American reseacher, while Paltrow puts to good use the enticingly cool exterior for which she's much admired, along with her talent for an upper-crust British accent and attitude.

Northam and Ehle have less to do in the flashbacks but still convey the repression and oh-so-proper behavior of the earlier age.

The well-made Possession is both thought-provoking and heart-stirring, a pleasurable combination for filmgoers.

Thursday, August 29, 2002

Paltrow hits career low with Possession

By Bob Grimm

** [2 out of 5 stars]

The impressive directing streak of Neil LaBute is momentarily interrupted with Possession, a stale adaptation of the popular A.S. Byatt novel.

This film is boring. Boring, boring, boring. LaBute has proved himself a master of nasty, brutal cinema (Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty) but he seems absolutely clueless with period pieces and contemporary romance. His film of two romances in different times is not at all romantic, and void of any real humor. It's near two hours of watching pretentious people behave like drones.

The two time periods in which Possession takes place are Victorian era and modern England. Crafty American scholar Roland Mitchell (LaBute alumni Aaron Eckhart), while researching 19th century poet Randolph Henry Ash, stumbles upon a more than 100-year-old note written in Ash's hand, stowed in a library book. The note is written to an alleged lover, and Ash (a fictional character) had historically been regarded as a family man and loyal husband.

Roland steals the note (which we are supposed to believe would have sat in a London university library book, undiscovered for more than 100 years) and goes on a quest to essentially prove Ash was a philanderer and dirty his good name.

His partner in crime would be Maud (Gwyneth Paltrow), distant relative of Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), the famed feminist icon poet and lesbian who Roland believes to be the subject of Ash's note. The two prance about to various libraries and historic locations, seeking the truth like a couple of National Enquirer reporters.

LaBute has changed the character of Roland from a British man in the novel to an American stud. If this was an effort to make the budding romance between Roland and Maud more intriguing, he has failed miserably. Eckhart and Paltrow have zero chemistry, with Eckhart's presence in this film, the lone American among the British, is reminiscent of Raymond Burr in a Godzilla movie.

Why not cast an actual British actress instead of Paltrow, who flashes her British accent for the umpteenth time? She's done a decent job of it in the past, but this time out, her accent is too polished, and is sandpaper on the ears. She sounds like an American actress thinking about how to say words like a Brit, rather than acting the words. To me, this is her worst performance.

The film actually works to a small degree in its depiction of the Victorian era romance between Ash and LaMotte. There's controversy in LaMotte's involvement with a man, and Lena Headley is effective as Blanche, LaMotte's jilted lover. Northam and Ehle shine in their small parts, and the film would've been better off to just explore their story, rather than wallowing in the present with Paltrow. Alas, that would have been too much of a departure from the book.

I can understand how a novel about fictional poets in love may have made for a sumptuous read, and the parallel romances a nice literary tool. Nonetheless, it translates to movie-time nightmare, a film that winds up being a joyless waste of time. Surprisingly, for a film about poets, it features very little actual poetry.

The movie is beautifully shot by Jean Yves Escoffier, and if the film were half as good as its final, epic picture of an English countryside, we might've had something worth watching.

What we get is a director's honest effort to expand his scope, and failing on many levels. LaBute is a good director, and he will make good movies again, but I would be wary of any future film by him set in merry old England.

Copyright Las Vegas Mercury, 2001 - 2002
Stephens Media Group

Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Possession

Reviewed by Ken Hanke

[5 out of 5]

At last -- a truly great film emerges from the summer of 2002, and about damn time! Yes, there have been some very good films this summer -- topping the list are Lilo Stitch and The Emperor's New Clothes -- but they've been sparse. This brilliant film by Neil LaBute shoots to the head of the class. Adapted from A.S. Byatt's (author of the source novel for Angels and Insects) novel by David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly), Laura Jones (Angela's Ashes), and LaBute, it's a solidly-crafted, old-fashioned piece of filmmaking that constantly delights, never insults your intelligence, and is invariably inventive and creative. Asking for a better movie would be downright cheeky -- you'd just be asking too much. If the idea of a movie about a pair of academics uncovering a 150-year-old "scandalous" love affair between a supposedly happily married poet laureate and a lesser, supposedly lesbian poet sounds drier than James Bond's martini that's because you haven't seen Possession.

The film takes an unpromising idea and manages to make it a funny, savvy, moving, even exciting detective story, effortlessly telling two tales at once in gloriously romantic terms with a great sense of style. When I say that Possession is old-fashioned, I mean that in the best sense of the term. It is reminiscent of the more thoughtfully adventurous films of the 1970s -- embracing the idea that viewers were capable of following complex narratives done in a dramatically powerful style and unafraid to call attention to the filmmaking process itself. LaBute's film is quietly "flashy," moving present to past and back again. On one breathtakingly beautiful occasion temporally distant events are brought together by simply panning from a character in the present to one from the past within the same scene.

Because of its parallel story structure, Possession is being compared to Karel Reisz's The French Lieutenant's Woman, but its multilayered narrative is more reminiscent of Ken Russell movies such as Mahler and Savage Messiah.. It looks more like those films than it does the Reisz picture -- no accident, since LaBute employed the services of Russell alumni Luciana Arrighi (Dante's Inferno, Women in Love) and Ian Whitaker (set dresser on nearly all of Russell's 1970s work) to give the film its look. It's remarkable filmmaking firmly grounded in one of the cleverest, most intelligently written, witty screenplays of recent memory. The script captures the bitchy back-biting of the academic world and the strangely insular quality of a small section of society where people have obscure specialties that have become jealously guarded obsessions. When American research assistant Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is missing from his post, his put-upon boss, Fergus Wolfe (Toby Stephens), sniffs, "Being American, he's probably off drug-trafficking." No sooner does Roland express surprise that Maud Bailey's (Gwyneth Paltrow) personal pet poet, Christabel LaMotte, was a lesbian than she shoots him down by icily telling him to not get excited, "They didn't have video cameras in those days."

The script is never at a loss for a clever turn of phrase or a delightfully barbed remark, and it comes across as spot-on in a screenplay dealing with highly-intelligent, highly-educated characters smart enough to realize their own absurdities. The cleverness is not limited to the dialogue. Possession brims with nice touches of unexpected physical action, as in every time that Roland..."borrows" a rare document or when an unscrupulous collector casually places his business card on the barrel of a shotgun being aimed at him by a suspicious property holder. The storyline is also unusual in reversing our expectations concerning historically revisionist work.

Whereas "scandals" about genuine historical people often center around the revelation of homosexuality, here we have one built on the revelation of unsuspected heterosexuality. Another interesting wrinkle is that Ash's (Jeremy Northam) betrayed wife is less devastated by the affair than is LaMotte's lover (Lena Heady). There's scarcely a false move in the film. It's beautifully realized from start to finish with flawless performances not just from Paltrow, Eckhart, Northam, and Ehle, but from supporting players like Toby Stephens, Graham Crowden, and Anna Massey. The film's greatest strength, however, lies in the unforced way its literary detectives get at some of the truth of what happened, but are still left with a great degree of conjecture and supposition. It's only the viewers -- not the characters -- who are let in on the whole truth. See this rich, heavily textured, multi-layered film as soon as you can.

DVDTalk.com

Read My Lips, Possession

[nota bene: The following review, by necessity, contains spoilers]

Mouth to Mouth

Read My Lips starts with a bang and ends with an orgasm.

It's the simple story of a deaf office worker in a property developers office who, in the course of training a new intern, becomes emmeshed in that man's robbery scheme.

Carla Behm (Emmanuelle Devos) is introduced to us as she inserts hearing aids into her ears. Thus, the world goes from silence to noise, the only two gradations in her hearing. She is a sad and lonely case, the harried backbone of her firm where others get credit for her hard work. Taking pity on her, the boss authorizes her to take on some help with the photocopying and other menial tasks.

The man she hires is Paul Angeli (Vincent Cassel). He's just out of jail, and the fact that he has a job so quickly pleases his parole officer (Olivier Perrier). However, Paul is so broke that he has taken to sleeping in the office's storage room. Carla takes pity on him and sets him up in an empty room in a building her firm has under construction.

The virginal Carla starts taking Paul to parties help with her much more experience, and somewhat bragging, friends. One thing leads to another, and Paul helps Carla out of an internecine, office-politics-born jam. Still, he leaves the firm and ends up tending bar in a disco run by a guy he owes money to. Casing the joint, Paul comes up with a scheme that can get him out of his jam, but he needs a pair of binoculars, and Carla's unique skill -- lip reading.

Leave it to the Europeans to explore the sexual tensions in everyday situations. Read My Lips is rife with unstated, or understated passions. And Carla and Paul are an unlikely pair. She is somewhat plain in an Emma Thompson sort of way, and he is a tall, gangly guy in old, bad '70s clothes that make him look like Lurch squeezed into a disco garb.

Not to give too much away, but they don't actually "do it" until the very end of the movie. Until then the movie has been a trading off of needs. It's been a series of exploitations and disillusionments, and of shifting loyalties. It's one of those movies wherein you really don't know what is going to happen next -- and not because you are confused.

Carla makes the transition from model office worker to gun moll with convincing subtlety. Director Jacques Audiard, a screenwriter and director (See How They Fall, A Self-Made Hero), keeps the movie both active and realistic by utilizing lots of hand-held camera work, and he keeps the story intimate with a preponderance of close-ups. If the film is a little too long, by about 20 minutes, or too violent, when it comes to a bravura suspense scene at the end, well, that's the price we pay for art films in this country. If you've seen The Company of Men, you might imagine Carla as a continuation of the story about the exploited deaf woman in that film, who becomes the victim of a cruel prank by two visiting businessmen. Here, she is downtrodden, but also has a knack for seeing the main chance.

The sexual tension between the two leads is also subtle. They are an unlikely duo, but the more you learn about their individual backgrounds, the more their romance, such as it is, seems plausible. Leave it to the French to investigate modern sexuality with all the warts showing. In fact, to see almost any nudity in films these days, the consumer has to stray to art film theaters (are there any these days?) or rep houses, where a succession of films, by directors such as Catherine Breillat in Romance and many others, and in forthcoming works such as Medem's Sex and Lucia, are at least relaxed about nudity, if not about the tensions that seem always to afflict intimacy.

More important, Read My Lips is another "work" film in a new genre that is expanding exponentially on both sides of the ocean. In these films, the workaday world is examined with withering exactitude, and not always without humor. From the truly indie film American job to American Beauty the emphasis is on how dehumanizing the work place has become. Some chose to rebel against it. You could call the genre Heroic Alienation. There are many more American examples (Office Space,Clockwatchers) but in a series of fascinating films, such as Time Off among many others, the French have been specializing in this weird genre lately.

So, you can see it as a crime film, or a romance, or as social commentary. Read My Lips is all of the above, and more.

Read My Lips's DVD Potential

Foreign films tend to receive cursory DVD release in the United States. Read My Lips was made by Pathe, in conjunction with a few other companies, and released in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures, which has so far done no video tapes or DVD releases, so the film's DVD distribution deal is unknown (at least to me). Unless Columbia Tristar picks it up as a DVD release, which would mean it might contain some extras, the film will probably end up at Image Entertainment or Fox Lorber if any of these companies think they can make any money of it. If indeed they choose to do so, the disc will probably have no extras beyond the usual subtitles, trailer, and other rudimentary supplements. Which is too bad, as an interview with the director, or with the two leads, would invigorate consumers of this disc.

Nine Tenths of the Law of Love

A more conventional alliance of disparate lovers is found in Possession, which should be a Miramax film, or a Merchant-Ivory production, but instead comes from the fledgling yet successful Focus subsidiary of Universal (formerly USA Films).

Despite its lurid title, promising visions of bondage and territorial battles over ownership of sexual beings, the movie is in fact based on the Booker Prize winning novel by A. S. Byatt, whose full title is Possession: A Romance, and concerns a pair of academics tracking down the previously undisclosed romance between two Victorian poets.

When lazy-seeming American student Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) stumbles upon a previously unknown letter by esteemed poet Randolph Henry Ash (not a real poet) who is enjoying a centenary, he takes it to feminist scholar Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) in order to explore the possibility that Ash, his specialty, had an affair with Christabel LaMotte, her specialty. Though at first something of a ballbuster, as her ostensible boyfriend dubs her (and she is introduced to Michell hard black boots first), she turns out to be just as romantic as the headstrong Michell.

As the soon-to-be-lovers pursue their mystery story about the truth of a romance between the two poets, a pair of scholars as piranhas, Maud's official, if disliked, boyfriend Fergus Wolfe (a thankless role enacted by Toby Stephens), and an American scholar named Cropper (the attractive Trevor Eve), who is not embarrassed to pay large sums to get rare English material into his New Mexico college, conspire to turn the tables against them, and take what they are finding to be a poignant and inspiring love story and turn it into a profitable literary find.

Pauline Kael once wrote about the fantasies of the art house crowd, and this would have been perfect fodder for her if the old bat hadn't kicked the bucket last year. The film has everything to delight the ol' skeptic: a growing love story between true romantics, unsubtle names for the "villains" (Wolfe , Blackadder, Cropper ) of the piece, several false breakups between the leads which should leave the audience scratching their heads, and a life affirming conclusion.

One has to say that the sensual close-ups of the delightful stars, which allow the male viewer (and even the female viewer, for that matter) to fantasize kissing Paltrow with an ease of access in spite of her distracting hair color changes and the fluctuations of her skin tone, transcend the cinema as the traditional critic assesses it. Still, it is art house porn, without any evidence of the actual f---ing, which is to be expected in today's Puritanical atmosphere. To emphasize the romance over the actual physical intimacy, the tale hops between the two modern literary detectives, and the subjects of the case they are investigating, the poets Ash (the always endearing Jeremy Northam) and LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). Even though these two have a child out of wedlock, the bitter irony of their eventual separation denudes their brief liaison of any "fun" as modern viewers might perceive it.

But then, this is a Neil LaBute film, and sexual fun as the average Joe might perceive it is not high on his list of priorities. While the French are taking inspiration from his early films (read about Read My Lips above), the once heartless director is becoming increasingly mainstream, rising higher and higher in the actorial foodchain (Paltrow) while dragging his inevitable associate (Eckhart) along with him. That the film does have its touching moments is testimony to, if nothing else, the actual insubstantiality of LaBute's grim world view, enunciated in The Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, so easily does it give way to the pallid romance between two rather, at least cinematically speaking, contrived scholars.

Don't get me wrong. The tale is well-told, and moving, if obvious, at its conclusion. It's just hard for a viewer with a sense of LaBute's grim psychological tales to trust him on this go-around. One wants to claim ownership of one's emotions, not cede possession to a crude manipulator.

Possession's DVD Potential

Traffic was a big hit for USA/Focus, but the company didn't do much with the DVD release. Instead, USA/Focus waited for Criterion to do the honors. Might Possession suffer a similar fate? At this point it is too early to tell what success the film might have, but if it is a big hit expect a cursory DVD release followed a few months later by a more expansive Criterion DVD package. On the other hand, if the film is a flop, expect only a Universal disc. In that case, the DVD would have only the trailer, cast and crew credits, and the trailer. A more thorough job would include the usual makings of, and cast interviews. Script to novel comparisons might be handy, and perhaps even an interview with Paltrow's dialogue coach, explaining how she manages her English accent.