The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
Directed by Jane Campion
Ms. Isabel Archer isn't afraid to challenge societal norms. Impressed by her free spirit, her kindhearted cousin writes her into his fatally ill father's will. Suddenly rich and independent, Isabelle ventures into the world, along the way befriending a cynical intellectual and romancing an art enthusiast. However, the advantage of her affluence is called into question when she realizes the extent to which her money colors her relationships.
7 connections found
View:
7 connections, in both directions
What critics compared The Portrait of a Lady to
If this Jane Eyre, in the wake of at least 20 earlier movie versions, doesn't fully sustain this spirit of reinventing the Brontë story (it can't match the boldness with which Jane Campion recalibrated The Portrait of a Lady for the 1990s), there are sufficient rewards to engage a viewer who hasn't encountered this quintessential Victorian, death-steeped romance since sophomore English, principally the two leads and their duet of Byronic morbidity and virginal fluster.
Meanwhile, Harvey Keitel ("The Grey Zone," "U-571") shows up as another FBI agent, Mary-Louise Parker ("The Portrait of a Lady," "Fried Green Tomatoes") plays Norton's wife, Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Almost Famous," "State and Main") embodies a seedy journalist and Anthony Heald ("Proof of Life," "8MM") reprises his role from "Lambs."
With nothing to do with Henry James’ The Portrait Of A Lady (just in case you were wondering), this offers a beautifully quiet and poised performance from Merlant, although Haenel at times seems to think she’s in Alain Resnais’ Last Year At Marienbad , and therefore stands around expressionlessly and offering really… really… long… pauses in between her line-readings.
But if you hanker after distaff questers who are truly hot for God or wisdom or something that passes for transformative experience, buy a ticket to travel instead with Adela Quested ( Judy Davis ) in " A Passage to India " ... or Kate Winslet 's "goddess" in " Holy Smoke " ... or Nicole Kidman 's dreamer in " The Portrait of a Lady " ... or Patricia Arquette 's Red Cross Knight in the mythic " Beyond Rangoon ."
Advertisement
Romance: His old pal Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey: The Portrait of a Lady), the busiest hooker in Nazareth, really want to be more than just his pal, but he’s guarding his virginity jealously.
One answer is to watch “Cloud Atlas” and then try Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors,” another new release in which an actor is forced to proliferate—becoming a beggarly crone, then a protective father berating his daughter, then a dying man making his peace with a tearful relative (a sequence directly stolen, by the way, from Henry James’s “The Portrait of a Lady”), and so forth.
The same holds true for Jonathan Jackson ("On the Edge," "The Deep End of the Ocean"), Maura Tierney ("Instinct," "Forces of Nature") and Martin Donovan ("Living Out Loud," "The Portrait of a Lady") in their smaller roles.