Word: isabell
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...attractive American girl of the late 19th century, Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) comes to England to visit her wealthy expatriate relatives. She succeeds in charming both her invalid cousin, Ralph Touchett (Martin Donovan), and a fine English lord (Richard Grant). But she refuses the lord's proposal of marriage and expresses her desire to see more of life. Her cousin, intrigued by her independent vision, persuades his dying father (John Gielgud) to leave her sufficient money to realize her dreams. Mr. Touchett complies, and upon his death Isabel inherits a fortune...
...Italy to begin her quest to "see life," but through the plotting of a duplicitous friend, Madame Merle (Barbara Hershey), gets ensnared by a cold-hearted aesthete and fortune-hunter, Gilber Osmond (John Malkovich). Their marriage quickly sours, and tensions between them rise to a crisis. First, Lord Warburton, Isabel's old suitor, reappears and begins to pay court to Pansy, Osmond's lovely but completely subjugated daughter. Later, Isabel learns that her cousin Ralph is dying...
...then there are the dream sequences: a fairly tame but eerie sexual fantasy near the beginning; and later, a dream involving a series of black and white images, beginning like an early '20s film reel but dissolving into even more dreamlike images of whispering lips and a hand gripping Isabel's waist--first clothed, then naked...
...director's style enshrouds the story in an atmosphere of mystery that is further accentuated by Kidman's engimatic remoteness. The pain of Isabel is evident, but not the inner spirit that makes her so attractive to Ralph Touchett (and so aggravating to Osmond). This may be due more to the scripting of the role than to her acting, but in any case it is Isabel more than any other character whom we find fundamentally unfathomable. Why does she submit to such a wretched marriage? What is it that she wants? Whom does she truly love...
...easy to see why Isabel would attract Campion (The Piano), who is drawn to women trying to assert themselves against the social and sexual rigidities of their moment. On the other hand, Isabel's unfathomable devotion to the contemptible aesthete Gilbert Osmond (whose black heart John Malkovich always wears on his sleeve) seems in particular to flummox her feminism. This leads her and screenwriter Laura Jones to soften James' bleak conclusion, but long before that, this Portrait has blurred to the point of indistinction...