In lieu of a gushing blurb, the literary type’s bathroom stall tribute, this begins a potted series on the fraught transition from page to screen, and cinema’s treatment of writers and writing.
Lots of us love books. Lots of us love films. What could be more natural than to bring the two together? Much like other natural (and indeed unnatural) acts, the process is frequently highly charged, messy, and unsatisfying for both parties.
Which proves true for Neil LaBute’s (In The Company of Men) adaptation of AS Byatt’s acclaimed novel, Possession. An irresistible plot for anyone enamoured of dusty old volumes and faded letters, as well as a good mystery, but ephemeral, and difficult to capture onscreen, directed by one of those talky playwrights one feels obliged to admire. Still, there’s a relatively fresh writer, and the director has penned one of the most vicious and provocative screenplays in recent memory. Not all bad, right?
Possession comes unstuck in its treatment of the romantic elements of the plot. The adaptation dilutes the book’s tandem of relationships to a wet-eyed, slow moving melodrama, rather like a less fleshly Mills and Boon twin pack; never a good analogy since my native snobbery makes me suspicious of all items that come in twin packs, like cheap toilet paper. The cast, all actors of calibre, do their best with the limp material, which goes a little something like this:
Scholar and Token Yank in London Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) stumbles upon a series of passionate love letters penned by a well-known purveyor of respectable Victorian sentiment Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam, The Tudors, Emma, Gosford Park), to a woman who is emphatically not his adoring, repressed wife (Holly Aird). Scenting a scandal, he discovers the recipient is Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle, best known for being Elizabeth Bennett, here with flowing Pre-Raphaelite tresses), a lesbian firebrand and poet.
In his sleuthing, he enlists the reluctant help of a sceptical fellow academic (Gwyneth Paltrow, once again demonstrating her facility for English vowels), saddled with an unfortunate name, and an even more unfortunate on-off boyfriend named Fergus. The estimable Toby Stephens typecast again as sneering public school alum who uses ‘old chap’ too liberally, and wears polo-necked sweaters with a blazer, aiming for Steve McQueen, but missing the target just a little – lazy shorthand for Nasty Bastard. Small wonder poor Maud (Paltrow) spends most of the film looking bored or wanly disapproving. But she soon takes a personal interest in the case, for no less a reason than her distant relationship to The Other Woman.
The above soon pales into insignificance, as before you can say ‘Mulder and Scully’, or indeed ‘Jinkies!’, we must endure some terribly dull odd-couple-y meet-cute bonding of scruffy, instinctive maverick and prim, cool rationalist. Eckhart and Paltrow share minimal chemistry, and there’s no sense of jeopardy in their coupling, since the boyfriend seems to have little interest in the matter. He does, however, provide a stumbling block while those meddling kids hang out in dusty attics, by allying himself with a wealthy, ruthless American collector of Ash memorabilia, also with a propensity for polo necked garb (a gloriously hammy Trevor Eve).
This plays out alongside flashbacks to the intense, years-long affair between Christobel and Ash, as it moves from between the pages to between the sheets. Alas, the film spends little meaningful time on the meeting of minds before we get to the tastefully filmed bodies, so it proves difficult to care.
Possession might have been saved from utter lassitude by small supporting roles; Lena Headley radiates quiet rage as the wronged, faithful lover, and the wonderful Tom Hollander appears as a louche solicitor friend and clichéd sounding board for Roland, as well as Maud’s eccentric, aristocratic parents, played by Anna Massey and Graham Crowden. But without the support of the script, none given enough to do.
It’s all very prettily done, with lots of elegant cinematography and picturesque locations, but unchallenging, and largely humourless. Even the unintentional hilarity of the grave-digging scene didn’t add much to this torpid, badly written effort.
