Review of Henry & June (1990) by Michael Y — 10 Aug 2010

Sex sex sex sex sex sex sex. That pretty much sums up this movie. Though it is intruiging none the less.

This movie is based on a true story that was written by famous writer, Anaïs Nin. This movie is about her sexual, emotional and passionate experiance with her husband, famous writer Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) and his wife (that's right, his wife too) June. This movie really reaches into the psychological experiances of Anaïs. It's not a great story, but it is an intresting observasion of feelings and emotions. Anaïs is torn by her feelings for the three of them an she doesn't know what to do. She just does what she wants to do, without questioning whether or not it is the right thing to do. She just wants to experiance it all.

The movie is shot in a very classical sort of way. (It does take place in the '30s.) It's a pretty dark movie throughout, and the sex scenes all are wild and dreamlike. The camera never really can stay still and the movie makes the audience get into the uncontrolable feeling of the passion. There are some very nice shots throughout the movie.

It's not a badly made movie. As a matter of fact I liked the way it was done. But the story was just an observasion of the life of Anaïs. The characters do learn a bit from eachother. They learn that people are not always what we think they are. Write a story about someone and and that person will say you got it all wrong. That's basically what this movie is. Missinterpretations of peoples feelings and needs. It's intruiging, but the movie is mostly sex, which earned it a nice NC-17 rating back in the day. So there's that to look forward too.