VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Rozinda 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.

evanston_dad 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

carolyn-epps I remember going to see this movie with a boyfriend back in 1997. I wanted to see this movie because I thought it would be romantic. I practically had to drag my boyfriend to see it with me, he laughed and slept thru most of it, while I tried desperately to understand the plot of the story. Nothing in this movie captured my interest!! I was so disappointed when I left the theater, I was tempted to ask for a refund!!!! I have even thought about renting the movie, if just to see if my understanding of the plot will become clear, but afraid it will only leave me feeling angry and unfulfilled. I can't give this film a good, not even a mediocre rating.

kris-oak I must say this first: Jane Campion is one of my absolute favorite directors and this is her most thoroughly worked-through piece of film yet and perhaps even her best film. (She has only had one failure and that was In the Cut, which instead was really bad.)Saying this it goes without saying that i am astonished over the low rating on this movie, here at IMDb; it just tells you in the end that you can never be sure on what other people feel.The Portrait of Lady, based on the brilliant 19C novel by Henry James, tells the story of a young orphaned woman, Isabelle Archer, who is taken under the wing by an aunt and later an uncle and a cousin, and brought to Europe. Being a woman "fond of her own ways" and her personal freedom, Isabelle guards her future very well; she declines a couple of favorable marriages in favour of her own independence. As she inherits money and becomes self sufficient, she travels through Europe and soon comes to realize that independence is quite a hard position to guard, and far more difficult to manage that in real life than just having the young persons idea of it. Her travels becomes a journey of maturity and struggle with herself.What James novel so brilliantly exhibits is the mechanics of a mind of a young person, even a person of any age; and James does this so balanced.Campions film in turn, takes on the essentials from the novel, drags it through a bit of Freud and end up with a version that transcends the barriers of time, up to our days. What Campion succeeds with is to modernize the novel; make it more accessible to a modern audience; and in the end, to portray what another costume piece did, Orlando; transcendence.She does so with a brilliant cast (amaze yourself over the actors involved above!!) with Nicole Kidman in the lead as Isabelle. Others, to mention a few is Martin Donovan as her cousin Ralph, Richard E Grant as Lord Warbuton (like cut from the from the novel!! Brilliant!!), John Malkoviich as Osmond, Barbara Hershey as Madame Merle and John Gielgod (also brilliant here; so downplayed). All actors are brilliant, mentioned or not.Although I really like Marin Donovan, who I think is a much neglected actor, it would have been interesting to see Malkovich as the consumptive cousin Ralph; the part was originally offered to him but got lost somewhere...).Campion also have the magnificent help of cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, who makes it possible to to render the movie its pictorial qualities, and in the end its total art impression, instead of just a costume drama.Personally I like the Piano but it is reportedly to be only a prior sketch to this one.My recommendation is SEE IT, no matter what judgment has been passed on it on these pages.