Movie Notes: Possession

January 30th, 2010

= 3 stars

Starring Aaron Eckhart, GwynethPaltrow, Jennifer Ehle
Directed by Neil LaBute

Synopsis

Scholar Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) happens upon some long-lost love letters between two Victorian poets. He enlists the help of Dr. Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) and they uncover a past, unknown romance. Based on a novel by A.S. Byatt.

The Good

• Damn, Paltrow looks good, and Northam ain’t half bad. Okay, that’s out of the way.
• I rented this while working through Neil LaBute movies, and was surprised to find this is not a cynical, napalm take on relationships, but actually a contrastingly, hopeless romantic one. The period portions work surprisingly well, and overall LaBute earns points for trying something different.
• A reasonably compelling time-skipping element — we have knowledge of a past romance unfolding and while digging it up, romance blossoms between the two researching scholars. Revelations are acted out in period upon discovery, building up to a relatively amusing twist ending. Thankfully, there is no reliance on hard-to-swallow, actual time travel between periods (Kate And Leopold, The Lakehouse).

The Bad

• Some over-reaching toward an ultimate, romantic flick holy grail, and falls quite short. The parallel romances separated by time vie to make an epic “love transcends time” statement like The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  Hopeless romantics out there can stick above the horrid The Notebook but far beneath A Room With A View.
• Hints at the vast difference between relationships then and now, due to the shift in gender roles (there are some glimmers when Roland calls Maud on her gender studies causing her to “pull back,”), or perhaps how a modern couple can ignite some passion into their relationship based on lessons from the past.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the period piece segments and about half of the modern-day tale, but there’s an overall sense of holding back, as LaBute is trying very hard to make a mainstream movie, losing some of that indie bite. There’s also the nagging, empty feeling that something was lost from translation from book to screen — and having not read the book, I can’t put my finger on it. A passable rental.

IMDB: Possession
Wikipedia: Possession
Rotten Tomatoes: Possession