![]() ![]() ![]() And when Madame Merle and Osmond appear, they are so obviously snakes in the grass that we think Archer is a fool for trusting them, instead of feeling empathy for her. That's all well and good, but what she and writer Laura Jones do is all but gut the motivations behind the story we don't see Archer's vitality early on, so we have nowhere to go when she falls, and we don't see what draws people to her. Campion claimed she was re-imagining the story of Isabel Archer, an American woman of character but not of means, who eventually marries unhappily, instead of just giving a straight filmed version. Rarely have I seen a movie version, though, which is so far off the mark but still has worthy parts to it. Yet THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, once you get into it, turns out to be quite a powerful novel, and given how much I loved THE PIANO, I was really looking forward to what Jane Campion could bring to it. I also dislike his over-attentiveness to detail, and I must confess a prejudice against any writer who says in 10 pages what they could just have easily said in 2. When I read DAISY MILLER in high school and was completely unengaged, that set me off the wrong foot with Henry James. ![]()
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