LaBute’s Topological Trick Does Not Amuse

It might have been an intriguing premise on paper: a secret love affair between poets from a century and a half ago casts a spell on a modern day couple amid the latter’s sleuthing about said affair. Based on A.S. Byatt’s novel of the same name, ‘Possession’ was apparently intended as a love story-cum-detective mystery. While I did spot a few mysteries in the film, they had little to do with the plot itself (see later). With this film, US director Neil LaBute has accomplished a topological trick that few will find amusing: he has converted a potentially multidimensional drama of romantic secrets into a flat, two-dimensional portrait of tedium.

The film opens with American Roland Mitchell. During his stint as a research student at the British Museum, Roland makes what seems to be a significant discovery, in terms of history, literature and possible monetary gain, while thumbing through a London Library book once owned by fictional Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash. It has to do with the hitherto unknown illicit romantic liaison of a fellow known for his steadfastness in marriage and disinterest in women.

Our odd couple soon find themselves reluctantly falling for one another (of course!) : the epistolary passion of Randolph and Christabel appears to have fired up their latent interest in one another. At least that’s what the film wants us to believe.

Mystery #3: Whence Gwyneth’s accent comes? Her Brit-talk seems to consist of dropping the pitch and dragging out the words against their will. It felt put-on and self-conscious, and caused this viewer a maddening distraction from the tale at hand. (I much prefer Gwyneth’s fellow American Reese Witherspoon’s more natural-sounding accent--and acting--in the recent transatlantic production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.)

Mystery #5: Has Neil LaBute, better known to this viewer, at least, for his unflinchingly mysogynistic tales (‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ and ‘In the Company of Men’), gone completely soft? His writing and directorial talents were put to better use in these older films which exposed the underbelly of modern intimate relationships in über-cynical fashion. He seems at a loss when faced with a conventional love story. LaBute first dipped into mush with ‘Nurse Betty’, and despite the uneven quality of that film, it’s more tolerable than the wooden and uninvolving ‘Possession’, thanks, perhaps, in no small measure to Renée Zellwegger’s charisma as Betty.

Finally, it’s striking how this vexatious and unimaginative retelling shares so little in common with the more mature and textured adaptation of another Byatt novel (also unread by me), ‘Angels and Insects’, directed by Philip Haas and starring Kristin Scott Thomas (1995). Given the divergent quality of their respective screen versions, it’s hard to believe that the two tales originated from the same pen. For all the wrong reasons, this film has now sparked my curiosity about the novel, so chalk one up for LaBute and company. I suppose I’ll find it out for myself, but I suspect there was many a slip ‘twixt book and film in ‘Possession.’ A generous two stars here (unless, of course, you’re dying to see Paltrow/Eckhart/Northam/Ehle in anything--then you might just like this).