Watch The Portrait of a Lady For Free

That was an excellent one.

Beautiful, moving film.

Awesome Movie

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Spoilers throughout Most of the acting is fine. But I had a problem with the later Kidman scenes. Kidman needed less of the weeping and more anger or deviousness, to keep herself away from her vile husband as much as possible. Instead she is a typical victim, inviting his spite and weeping when he exerts it. She even lets the thug hit her.Clearly Isabel was heading for a fall right from the start of the story. She's quite convinced there's no point in marrying her decent suitor Goodwood, she wants as people often do to live it up for some years before marriage. Unfortunately, she isn't nearly as clever as she thinks she is and it's not long before she's met the devious Merle and has been hoodwinked into marriage with Merle's vile lover Osmond so that the pair of them can live on Isabel's money.Standard Henry James type of theme. American girls take people at face value but expect value for money. Europeans are devious and will say/do anything to get an American heiress's money as they are always had up but want to live the high life. Isabel is naive - totally fooled by Osmond's pretence to be an aesthete. Osmond is a self-satisfied, conceited, totally self-centred and selfish jerk who thinks he's a wonderful and admirable aesthete whom everyone should admire but we audience see through him right from the start. Even his long-time mistress and mother of the child Pansy, Merle, is deceived by him until he finally, at the end, tells her he never cared about her either and she realises she has wasted her life on him and suffered from having to hide the true identity of her child for nothing.Osmond's method is the well-known "Whatever happens it's always your fault, I am perfect and blameless, I am a saint and you are selfish/thoughtless/stupid/venomous/a liar/hiding the truth/whatever along with the ruthless Victorian head of the family you do as I say nonsense that women had to put up with in that period. The jaw dropping thing is that Isabel becomes totally witless - seems to believe all this drivel from her vicious husband and begs his forgiveness every time. She becomes aware gradually that he is being unfair but hasn't the guts to tell him so to his face and then walk out - it would be difficult but perfectly possible for her to have fled with her American lover Goodwood who is at his wits end why it is she won't be with him even though clearly she has feelings for him.Osmond's daughter falls for "the wrong man". Isabel tries to help Pansy, by helping to deter the suitor her father wants, but Osmond soon finds out, accuses his wife of being treacherous and sends his daughter to a convent to "think about her errors and her future". Pansy proves to be like her father - treacherous. She tells Isabel dismissively, "I have learned that I must always obey my father." So much for Isabel trying to help the girl to be with the man who loved her - Pansy is revealed as shallow like her parents. Isabel is a fool - she has allowed herself to be brainwashed by a jerk because she thought he was glamorous (though anyone less glamorous than this Osmond would be hard to find, I disliked him on sight, quite correctly). Isabel's kindly cousin Ralph has the sadly not unusual consumption, and now is dying and Isabel goes to him in England in spite of her husband refusing to believe Ralph was that ill, ie a means to again force his wife to his own bidding through trading on her loyalty. But Isabel is more loyal to Ralph and goes to him.Ralph dies. Goodwood is there and at last we think it is his time. Can Isabel is well away from her Florence-based husband. She can now go back to the USA with devoted Goodwood? In an outdoor scene, she finally makes clear she now loves Goodwood and kisses him, but then she runs away from him back into the house. The movie ends with her standing at the door of the house looking towards the camera. You can't tell for sure what she'll do next but there's a feeling of foreboding.Beats me why the movie didn't finish the story. Goodwood calls next day only to discover that Isabel has gone straight back to her husband. We are told her friend who has been Ralph's companion has "taught Goodwood how to wait". How long, the reader wonders? Presumably until Osmond dies, but that man I would suspect will outlive everyone and Isabel will never leave him because if she did, she'd betray her own original conceit that she wanted to live an exciting and meaningful life. Basically, Isabel is a silly, self-destructive woman. She could never make any man happy. She needs, it seems, to be bullied.

23-year-old American in 1872 England, orphaned and now residing with wealthy relatives, is preyed upon by a fortune hunter who--despite coming up against a determinedly independent lass with a cynical overview of marriage--breaks down the girl's defenses and takes her as his wife; years later, their marriage on the rocks, the woman upsets her husband's plans by interfering in the love-life of her stepdaughter who is being unsuccessfully wooed by a Lord. Director Jane Campion opens this adaptation of Henry James' novel with a collage of modern women's faces, free and forthright and fulfilled, but then hands us a heroine who is duped, abused, and reduced easily to tears. This is not Nicole Kidman's fault, her performance as Isabel Archer is as good as can be expected. Campion fails to reveal any dimensions of this girl, and Isabel's circling conversations with men have a one-note, droning quality which matches Campion's chilly visual style: colorless. Campion's artistic attributes certainly give select sequences a stunning, eerie romantic flavor, but she doesn't do much with the actors (some of whom, Mary Louise Parker and Shelley Duvall in particular, seem woefully out of place). Kidman is under-lit and posed like a porcelain doll (at one point, her grayish pallor perfectly matches that of a pillar just behind her); yet, while these shots are thoughtfully composed, they call attention to themselves in a negative way for an audience very likely to get fed up with such pretensions (especially in a film which is already methodically paced). Ironically, "The Portrait of a Lady" comes mostly to life when dealing with John Malkovich's cunning hubby; the actor has played roles similar to this in the past, but his relish in bringing out the dark side of this tale can clearly be felt. The picture is literate, but almost in an exasperating way; the tastefulness of it as 'art', and the tactfulness of Laura Jones' screenplay, nearly kills off our interest. ** from ****

No one can accuse Jane Campion of lack of ambition in bringing Henry James' novel to the screen, but her film is a total disaster.The audacious style that made "The Piano" so compelling and memorable is a Frankenstein's monster here, and it runs away with Campion's film. The result is incomprehensible. Actors are stranded walking around opulent sets saying lines, while Campion pulls out every trick in the book to confounding effect.Though the fact that the film is incoherent probably means that it's a good adaptation, since it was after all based on a novel by Henry James....Grade: F

I found this to be one of the BEST films I've ever been privileged to watch. Nicole Kidman is 'superb' in this film, as is John Malcovich, Barbara Hershey & Viggo Mortensen (others too, but these stand out). As I was watching the film, I couldn't help but think that Malcovich played the part of a Narcissist. I read the review and didn't see this mentioned, but I am wondering if others have also felt the same about the part he plays. I myself have experience being married (now separated) from a Narcissist....I recognize Kidman being treat as an 'object' not a human being with feelings & needs of her own. He was very cruel to her. This film is has amazing brilliance, and shows truly how a woman can fall prey to a manipulative, selfish man, and what it takes to get out from under one. Very deep!!