The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

hyped garbage

Did you people see the same film I saw?

A lot of fun.

Blistering performances.

I've repeatedly seen this movie, I simply can't help myself from watching this example of good taste that has the ideas, the feeling, the meanings and also the means of a work of art. This movie is simply adorable from the beginning to the end. The actors, the story, the costumes, the soundtrack, scenery, everything is beautiful and full of authenticity. The adaptation from the novel appropriately reveals the subtle, simple and total story about life and mistakes, not only about women, but an extension about choosing wrong and about chances of choosing again, of hoping. But hoping itself is a choice, we all have the choice of hoping or not. This category is called "sublime" in art I guess...

A dreadful version of the great novel. Shame on you Laura Jones. Shame on the director for depicting Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) as a rather plain, uninteresting young woman with a goofy hairdo. What can possibly attract all of those men who want to marry her? And the ending was completely unsatisfactory. A much better way of telling this story, since James' prose is so rich with internal motivations and feelings which cannot easily be revealed by dialogue or even by facial expressions, would be to have voice-over. This would have allowed for a much improved climax. There are only two commendable elements here. One is the cinematography and the other actor John Malkovich, who portrayed a superb Osmond.

Excellent acting performances, nice cinematography and all that, but there was no ending. I'm sorry, there just wasn't. No plot, no climax, no ending. I think I wasted about 2 hours 20 minutes watching a story unfold that had another half hour to go at least. What were the people who made this movie thinking? The acting was good, of course, all were true professionals in every sense of the word. However I cannot recommend this movie unless you are really, really just into period pieces for the scenery. The story was probably good in a book, but was nonsensical in this film.

After Isabel knew that Pansy is Serena's daughter, she was shocked at the very beginning and scared consequently 'cause she finally came to understand that she was used by her merciless husband and his lover. After this brief encounter with Serena, she realized that her cousin deeply fell for her since the very beginning,he did all he could to make her lead a happy and rich life but to propose to her himself, which is partly due to his consideration( he didn't want to widow her since he knew that he couldn't live long due to his consumption), and also might because that he was unconfident ( his wealthy friend Lord Warburton was refused when he proposed to Isabel, he might believe that he is out of the question too).Anyway, Isabel realized the real love she held is to her cousin- Ralph, but all is too late. She was angry with herself, she was angry with her fate, in other words, she hates herself so much that she wants to torture herself as sort of revenge.. But one thing is clear that she has changed again after the visit of England, after the dying of Ralph, after knowing that her husband is merely using her for her money, she wouldn't make his life easy as before, she might want to revenge him by returning to him. One thing is clear, she is becoming stronger and more cruel, maybe no less cruel than her husband. She is like this because she lost the only one who loves her and whom she loves. Isabel is dead.