Review of The Portrait of a Lady (1996) by Wildwickedslip — 02 Sep 2022

Oh dear. It doesn’t seem like anybody, the director and screenwriter included has read Henry James’ first period masterpiece. The novel itself has no story whatsoever - it’s entirely about the psychological complexity of the characters, so when you suck all of the psychology out of the film, we’re ultimately left with nothing but a tedious tale of a group of people we know nothing about and who’s motives we don’t understand - which isn’t helped by the fact that the film skips the first 150 pages of the novel.

I understand that psychology is hard to portray on-screen, but only a very lazy, cheap attempt is made here. The acting, for the most part, is wooden and flat out wrong, especially Kidman’s, as she turns Isabel Archer from an enigmatic, quietly strong willed, complex heroine into a stroppy, bolshy girl with no depth, who builds no apparent rapport with Pansy, and therefore makes the end not make any sense.

John Malkovich gives a poor performance of Mr. Osmond - he presents us with an outright baddie rather than the deviously manipulative man that Henry James writes in the novel. There’s no variation in Malkovich’s performance, and therefore we are shown no valid reason as to why Isabel marries him.

Quite frankly the entire thing is a mess. The casting is okay, and at least the story and dialogue aren’t tampered with, but unless you’ve read the novel, this film isn’t going to make much sense.

But then again, it makes very little sense to those who have.