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POSSESSION Send This Review to a Friend
Director Neil LaBute had better be careful or he'll ruin his reputation for making movies with a nasty edge. His "Possession" is a lovely, romantic, lyrical and literary-minded double love story spanning two different time frames, one contemporary the other Victorian. Cast to perfection, it is all about falling in love, fears about commitment, secret passions, professorial sleuthing, and sneaky unethical competition. The astute screenplay is by David Henry Hwang, Laura Jones and LaBute based on the Booker Prize novel by A.S. Byatt. Here is a film with wit and intelligence to go with its serving of scholarship entwined with romance.
The set-up is dandy. Gwyneth Paltrow has never been more beautiful on screen than in her persuasive portrayal of Maud Bailey, and English scholar in the throes of research on a Victorian woman poet. Aaron Eckhart gives another appealing performance as Roland Mitchell, an American on a fellowship in London devoted to studying a renowned poet of the Victorian era. The two meet, and when chance leads to discovery of hitherto unknown love letters that would seem to be between their two research subjects, the stage is set for a joint scholarly adventure in which they must travel together.
Both Victorian poets are clever fictional concoctions. Christabel LaMotte, portrayed with spirit and unleashed passion by Jennifer Ehle, is an independent-minded woman with another woman as her lover, yet suddenly falling in love with poet Randolph Henry Ash, played by handsome Jeremy Northam. Since the married Ash, poet laureate to Queen Victoria, is known for poems dedicated to his wife, the letters indicating that an illicit affair might have taken place would hold great interest for scholars. Proof would be even better.
The film switches back and forth between the researchers and past events uncovered in their quest. Meanwhile, an arrogant rival professor gets wind of what's going on and sets out with a co-conspirator on a path to secretly trump the investigation and get the glory and possible financial rewards for himself.
Maud and Roland, thrown into proximity, are intellectually and emotionally stimulated by the example of the poets. However, Roland is wary of commitment and Maud is wary of someone wary of commitment. Can these colleagues eventually find love of their own?
The story is told elegantly with the maximizing of the settings, Victorian and contemporary, and the double layer of romantic entanglements, coupled with attention to literature and the university world, is engrossing. Sometimes the period switches become a bit excessive, but never enough to outweigh the enjoyment of watching a film that's different and so well performed. As noted, this is new territory for LaBute and he conquers it admirably. A Focus Features release.
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