On P List of Movie Reviews
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The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
Rate:
3
Viewed:
12/24
12/24:
Full of emptiness, The Portrait of a Lady isn't a film but a book.
Of the "who cares?" kind, the plot hardly advances, going from point A to point A to point A and so on.
When Countess Gemini did the improbable by announcing that Pansy was Gilbert Osmond and Serena
Merle's daughter as a result of their adulterous affair, five miles had been achieved, but I was
past the point of caring and wanted the overlong bore to end already.
I'll say that John Malkovich, who's the chief reason why I went for the movie, stole the show, and that's because
his character was the most developed while others were barely fleshed out. Despite Nicole Kidman's hideous-looking
pubic hair on top of her head, I'm not going to blame her for the problems of The Portrait of a Lady,
but she isn't in the same league with John Malkovich and Barbara Hershey as far as acting ability goes. To achieve
her waist size, Nicole Kidman wore a corset until it was nineteen inches in circumference. What a pointless
practice these silly women had carried on for many centuries.
Two Academy Award nominations went to Barbara Hershey for Best Supporting Actress and Janet Patterson for Best
Costume Design. I agree with the latter but not the former. Like I said, her character was barely fleshed out. In
order to understand how to make a plot work in the Machiavellian sense, director Jane Campion should've watched
Dangerous Liaisons plenty of times. It's not the costumes. It's not the
setting. And it's not the players themselves. It's the script, stupid! It has to be interesting enough, the kind
that advances the plot every ten minutes or so. That's why Christopher Hampton won the Oscar. Hey, Jane...what's
the fucking point of showing these modern women during the opening credits? I thought the feminist movement
ended decades ago.
By the way, if you're wondering what it was that Ralph Touchett was dying of, it's consumption which is another
word for tuberculosis as in somebody "slowly consumed by the disease." You will see that mentioned a lot in
classic literature. It's an Old World contagious disease, having killed more people than anything
else during the 19th century. The cause is Bacillus, a bacteria. When a vaccine was finally developed
to combat the problem, the incidence rate went down big time, especially after the end of WWII. I looked up
the internet to find out if checking into a sanatorium was an effective means, but the answer
remains elusive. Regardless, 80% of those infected had died.
All in all, no matter how impressive the cast or the cinematography looks,
Hollywood cannot successfully convert a book into a film if it will still feel like reading a book.