Possession is Neil LaBute's adaptation of A.S. Byatt's novel, which I never read because I thought I had tried to read Byatt before and couldn't get through ten pages, but now I can't remember which book I tried to read, and it's possible I never read any of her stuff and am unfairly impugning her. LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart plays Roland, an American in London to study the works of 19th-century poet Randolph Henry Ash (Eckhart is most unconvincing as a Victorian-literature grad student; he's all outdoorsy and rugged, and he sure as hell didn't get those abs from carrying books). Roland discovers hidden letters from Ash to a mystery woman and, unable to interest the professor he works for (distractingly named Blackadder -- the first time Roland uses the name, trying to get a book from an uncooperative librarian, I thought he was trying to snow the guy, like next he would say, "Oh, maybe his secretary, Sybil Fawlty, called to tell you about me"), he links up with Maud (Gwyneth Paltrow, sadly), who specializes in the most likely object of Ash's affection, poetess Christabel LaMotte. From there on, golly, it's like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew teaming up to solve The Mystery of the Old Dead Poets. (Some researchers Roland and Maud are: they heedlessly paw over 150-year-old documents and other artifacts with their bare hands. Shouldn't they be wearing gloves or something?)
As the obligatory infatuation between Roland and Maud develops, LaBute interweaves scenes of the clandestine affair between Ash (Jeremy Northam) and LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). Both romances are fairly tedious and predictable; the 1859 side is leaded down with turgid verse and too many gazes-meeting-across-crowded-rooms, and on the present-day side, the two researchers have hang-ups about love and sex based on previous affairs (Maud's hair is in such a severe bun -- naturally, caused in some murky way by her ex-boyfriend -- that you know Roland will make it come cascading down by the end of the movie). Their gun-shy attitudes seemed pretty realistic until Roland, explaining why he doesn't let himself feel passion or get involved with women anymore, says remorsefully of his past behavior, "My antics made a lot of people unhappy..." He pauses and adds sadly, "...one horribly so," and then you know it's fiction, because I've yet to meet or hear of a guy who would repent like that. (Though you think for a minute maybe he's referring to In the Company of Men.)
I'm maybe coming off a little harsher than I mean to -- though I wasn't exactly bored, I wasn't really entertained, either. Expectations may be playing into it as well; I loved Nurse Betty and was looking forward to LaBute's next movie. Surprisingly, LaBute ladles on the sentiment, and through the screenplay's fault or the book's, the ending is mawkish and predictable and smugly brings together far too many coincidences. Northam and Ehle seem constrained and glazed over, and Eckhart has a few revelatory scenes that catch you but mostly coasts on his charm and his twinkling blue eyes. I loathe Gwyneth Paltrow in either her ice-princess or her pouty modes, and she employs both here, plus the priggish British accent.
Well, let's just hope that LaBute is establishing a pattern of a brilliant movie followed by a disappointing one. So I'm really looking forward to his next project.
Back to homepage
Reviews A to F
Reviews G to L
Reviews M to R
Reviews S to Z
Search