director
Neil LaBute
screenwriters
David Henry
Hwang
Laura Jones
Neil LaBute
based on
the novel by
A.S. Byatt
producers
Barry Levinson
Paula Weinstein
cinematographer
Jean-Yves Escoffier
music
Gabriel Yared
editor
Claire Simpson
cast
Gwyneth Paltrow (Maud Bailey)
Aaron Eckhart (Roland Michell)
Jeremy Northam (Randolph Henry Ash)
Jennifer Ehle (Christabel LaMotte)
Trevor Eve (Prof. Morton Cropper)
Toby Stephens (Fergus Wolff)
Holly Aird (Ellen Ash)
Lena Headey (Blanche)
Tom Hickey (Blackadder)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 102m
u.s.
release: 8/16/02
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other neil
labute films
reviewed on this website:
- in
the company of men
- nurse betty
- the shape of things
- the wicker man (2006)
- your friends & neighbors
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It's about an hour or more
into Possession before it arrives -- the devastating Gwyneth
Crying Face, known to drive women, men, and even the occasional
cat into sympathetic sniffles. I first saw the GCF in Seven, one of Gwyneth Paltrow's
early toe-dips in Hollywood, and marvelled at the young actress's
understanding that what makes an audience sob is not an actor
who blubbers and expels snot all over the upholstery, but one
who tries hellaciously not to cry. Gwyneth herein plays
a clipped, cool British researcher who would sooner chew rusty
bottle-caps than make a display of her emotions, so she gets
to repress her tears at several points. I was cheered. Some want
Vin Diesel snowboarding in front of an avalanche; give me Paltrow
biting the insides of her lips and barely holding her anguish
at bay.
There are other things to recommend
Possession, too, though many critics, eager to remind
themselves that they also read between screenings of Swimfan
and Feardotcom, have already
told you the film doesn't hold a candle to A.S. Byatt's intricate
source novel. I wouldn't know; I have yet to get around to the
book. What I can report is that, at first glance, this seems
an awfully sharp detour for director Neil LaBute, whose past
work (In the Company of Men,
Your Friends & Neighbors)
has dealt with the ways in which the nature of romance is red
in tooth and claw. But LaBute has been gesturing towards other
concerns -- his Nurse Betty
was downright sweet -- and Possession, in his care,
is an illustration of plus ça change, plus c'est la
même chose. Or, in English, love sucked just as much
then as it does now.
Stubbly grad student Roland
Michell (Aaron Eckhart, testing the new waters of non-shitheadedness
in a LaBute film) stumbles across a letter written by the 1859-era
English poet he's researching. The poet, one Randolph Henry Ash
(Jeremy Northam), appears to have drafted (but not sent) a love
note to a woman not his wife. More enticing still, the woman
might well be another poet of the day, Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer
Ehle), long thought to be a lesbian, and claimed as same by like-minded
readers for decades. Maud Bailey (Gwyneth), a LaMotte researcher
as well as her descendant, scoffs at Roland's theories, but her
scoffing stops once more evidence is dusted off and brought to
light. Her scoffing at the very existence of Roland stops, too,
when the plot contrives for them to share a bed.
Possession is a dual-track exploration of romantic
mores then and now. In both stories, we witness repression out
of necessity: Ash can't abandon his ailing wife; Christabel does
have something going on with portraitist Blanche (Lena Headey);
and Roland and Maud, modern anti-lovers to their very toes, are
of course wary of handing their heart to someone new who might
stomp on it. LaBute and his overqualified co-scripters (playwright
David Henry Hwang and sometime Jane Campion collaborator Laura
Jones) segue smoothly between centuries, perhaps giving a little
more screen time to a pompous American professor (Trevor Eve)
and his skunky Brit cohort (Toby Stephens) than is necessary;
one doesn't expect a movie like this to climax with a near-disinterment
and fisticuffs, but, hey, even E.M. Forster arranged for a character
to die by bookcase.
A film like this rides on the
quality of the acting, and the Brits -- Northam and Ehle -- invest
their forbidden love with centuries of fine repressed English
tradition (I'm a pushover for stuff like that; I could watch
and re-watch Remains of the Day for the remains of this
year), more implosive than explosive. The very American Eckhart
and the faux-Brit Paltrow (once again unfurling her perfectly
presentable English accent) itch with modern impatience -- they
want to get to the bottom of their literary mystery, and you
strongly suspect that at least part of their quest is sublimation
for their growing attraction. They want proof that star-crossed
love can work, and when they start uncovering evidence
that things didn't go so breezily for Ash and Christabel, Maud
chokes up and wishes to back off. But LaBute doesn't, and even
the guaranteed tear-jerker he gives us at the end didn't spoil
my fun, though I of course wished he'd found some way to place
Gwyneth on the scene, moved by the sight into giving us one last
GCF. Still, we can't have everything.
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