THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (1996) ** How do you film a Henry James? Partial Answer: not like this. Partial, because it partly works. Jane Campion sets the tone with a stridently artsy set of opening credits and the sets, especially the Italian villa-issima, are great. Not as great as the costumes though, hurray for Janet Patterson! The actors let it down. Who thought that Nicole Kidman had the depth for a literary period piece? Someone involved in finance is my guess, and someone who irreparably doomed the venture is my conviction. Barbara Hershey plays her role so instinctively that she gives away much of the ending, if not the plot, early. John Malkovich, in essentially the same role that he played so brilliantly in Dangerous Liasons, is a whispering two-dimensional cardboard cutout at best. Most of the time these criticisms are accurate, Malkovich has some semi-grand scenes and Herschey's main problem is probably that she's trying to react to emotions the other actors aren't generating. Why feel terribly guilty, for example, about what's happening to the Kidman character? She's obviously in over her head, and being paid handsomely, no less. It must be difficult to be a beautiful lady, brilliant, tasteful, charming, soulful, sensitive, wealthy, people always needing you for their own reasons...but only the latter two issues would appear to be dealt with to much extent here. It's difficult to believe that Campion had already shot The Piano - many of the same devices are used here but in a comparatively amateurish manner, it feels like she thinks a directorial trick is needed every 20 minutes to maintain some subjective standard of artistic integrity. More likely she's a good enough director that she knew she had to do something to compensate for her actors. "Stick Figure of a Lady" might be a more fair title, would probably make for a more entertaining and comparatively insightful film, and couldn't possibly take 144 minutes.
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