Portrait of a Lady

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 3, 1997 | by Leslie Alan Horvitz

Director's poetic license robs Henry James' classic tale of its haunting power and meaning.

Whether it marks a renewed fervor for great literature or simply a failure of imagination, there's no question that Hollywood increasingly is turning to the classics for story ideas. The last several months already have witnessed a spate of movies based on the works of Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Persuasion), Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence), Joseph Conrad (The Secret Agent) and Thomas Hardy (Jude). Now, with the release of Portrait of a Lady starring Nicole Kidman, Henry James is getting his turn.

Portrait may signal only the beginning of a James revival on the big screen. Two more novels by James -- Washington Square (in two versions) and The Wings of the Dove -- are in various stages of development. The author, who once called himself "that queer monster, the artist, an obstinate finality," no doubt would have been surprised by his sudden popularity.

When it comes to turning classics into "hot properties," directors tend to look upon the texts as sacred or impose their own vision upon the bare bones of the plot. Allowances obviously have to be made when adapting an elaborately structured 19th-century novel such as Portrait to the screen. And it is understandable why director Jane Campion, an Australian who made her reputation on these shores with The Piano, would wish to give Portrait a decidedly feminist reading. But it only takes a few minutes for Campion to sabotage the story that James was trying to tell, and that kind of betrayal is not easy to forgive.

Portrait, published in 1881, is the story of Isabel Archer, a pretty 23-year-old American who has come to live with her aunt and uncle in England after the death of her parents. "She had had everything a girl could have: kindness, admiration, bonbons, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing, plenty of new dresses," wrote James.

Isabel has plenty of suitors, too, most of whom she finds unacceptable. She rebuffs her cousin Ralph Touchett (Martin Donovan) because he is too sick with consumption. The wealthy Lord Warburton (Richard E. Grant) is too conventional. Caspar Goodwood (Viggo Mortensen) is too much in love with her.

The fact is, Isabel has theories about how life should be lived, even if most of her knowledge about the world comes from books. Idealistic, romantic and too headstrong for her own good, she even goes so far "as to wish that she might find herself some day in a difficult position, so that she should have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded."

Isabel's life undergoes a dramatic transformation when her uncle (John Gielgud) dies, leaving her a fortune. Far from giving her the freedom for which she yearns, the money turns into a distinct liability. She becomes a mark whose virtue and fortune are up for grabs, duped first by the cunning Madame Serena Merle (Barbara Hershey), who poses as her friend, and then by Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich), a treacherous dilettante who has "no property, no title, no honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor brilliant belongings of any sort."

As portrayed by Malkovich, Osmond is such an odious and shady character that it's difficult to understand why Isabel is so blind to his flaws. A snob who covets money and position, he presents himself as lonely and cultivated and altogether aloof from society. After they marty, he locks her up in his house in Rome, subjugating her to his whims and forcing her to become an unwilling accomplice in his machinations.

Isabel has managed to get herself into the "difficult position" she once wished for, but her response is anything but heroic. However cruelly Osmond treats her, she struggles to maintain appearances, fearing that to do otherwise would be tantamount to admitting that she'd made a terrible mistake. It's no wonder why James characterized Isabel as a woman who is "affronting her destiny."

Interestingly, Kidman's take on the character is quite different from James'. "I've always been asked to play strong women," she said in a recent interview, "and Isabel is strong but she is so vulnerable at the same time and I loved that." The reason she is so vulnerable, though, is because she is too naive to recognize evil when she sees it. Nor does she know what to do about it.

In bringing Portrait to the screen, Campion has turned it into something of a psychological thriller, even a film noire. Rain falls constantly, doors bang shut with ominous finality and the heroine runs from room to room in a desperate attempt to escape her sinister captor. In place of James' subtle shadings of character, the movie offers the titillation of her erotic fantasies. Essentially, Isabel has been plucked out of a Victorian parlor of the last century and deposited on a psychoanalyst's couch in this one.

Of course, Campion is free to explore Isabel's psyche as much and as graphically as she wants. But that does not let her off the hook when it comes to dealing with how Isabel will respond when she finally is given the opportunity to gain her freedom. James knows exactly what she will do; his ending, as one reader has pointed out, is "both surprising and inevitable."