Why The Por­trait of a Lady remains Jane Campion’s most bit­ter­sweet film

Fol­low­ing the award-win­ning, ground-break­ing tri­umph of 1993’s The Piano, hopes couldn’t have been high­er for Jane Cam­pi­on​’s fol­low-up. Based on Hen­ry James’ most beloved nov­el, The Por­trait of a Lady seemed on paper like a crit­i­cal slam dunk. Yet the film was wide­ly dis­missed upon its release, with con­tem­po­rary reviews describ­ing it as ​“pre­ten­tious,” ​“slow,” and ​“exas­per­at­ing”. It was a com­mer­cial fail­ure, too, los­ing mon­ey at the box office.

Adapt­ed by Lau­ra Jones, who pre­vi­ous­ly wrote the screen­play for Campion’s An Angel at My Table in 1990, The Por­trait of a Lady is a fas­ci­nat­ing out­lier in the his­tor­i­cal dra­mas of ​’90s Hol­ly­wood. The corsets and long­ing glances are all there, but Cam­pi­on imbues her film with anachro­nis­tic twists and nar­ra­tive shifts that appar­ent­ly upset the James purists. His dense prose and care­ful­ly lay­ered cri­tique of Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism were remould­ed by the direc­tor to suit her own the­mat­ic con­cerns, as well as her keen eye for sensuality.

The film’s title could eas­i­ly describe Campion’s entire fil­mog­ra­phy – sto­ries of women who bat­tle patri­ar­chal bound­aries and fight to ful­fil their desires, be they sex­u­al (In the Cut), artis­tic (The Piano), or spir­i­tu­al (Holy Smoke). Cam­pi­on crafts nar­ra­tives cen­tred on bril­liant women who are plunged into expe­ri­ences that force them to sec­ond-guess their own identity.

Nicole Kidman’s Isabel Archer, a fierce­ly dri­ven but naïve heiress who finds her­self trapped in a love­less mar­riage, is cut from the same cloth as the Cam­pi­on hero­ines who pre­ced­ed and fol­lowed in her foot­steps – the key dif­fer­ence being that Isabel does not achieve it; her free­dom is out­right denied.

Isabel chal­lenges society’s nar­row expec­ta­tions by turn­ing down mar­riage pro­pos­als from a string of per­fect­ly accept­able suit­ors. Then, coaxed by her sup­posed friend, the ruth­less Madame Mer­le (Bar­bara Her­shey), she falls head-over-heels in love with Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich), a cal­lous art col­lec­tor who drops his roman­tic façade the moment they are wed. Kid­man vis­i­bly wilts as the nar­ra­tive unfolds, cap­tur­ing Isabel’s trans­for­ma­tion into the kind of mis­er­able, trapped wife she had always feared.

Like many of Campion’s hero­ines, her nerve and a head­ful of ideas makes her vul­ner­a­ble to manip­u­la­tion by ill-mean­ing men. The Piano’s Ada McGrath (Hol­ly Hunter) is pun­ished for her sins with the removal of a fin­ger – an act of artis­tic cas­tra­tion – while Holy Smoke’s Ruth Bar­ron (Kate Winslet) is denied her reli­gious awak­en­ing by her igno­rant fam­i­ly, who hire a depro­gram­mer to ​“set her right”. In the end, how­ev­er, these women are giv­en a shot at redemp­tion and a return to free­dom. Isabel is not. She doesn’t tri­umph over sex­ism or gain revenge on those who wronged her. Her life just sort of fiz­zles out.

As in the nov­el, the exact direc­tion Isabel will take is ambigu­ous – will she return to Osmond to pro­tect his abused daugh­ter, or give up every­thing to be free? – but for Cam­pi­on, her sad­ness seems assured. She is not dead but some­thing close to it. Even Madame Mer­le, who facil­i­tat­ed Isabel’s mar­riage, admits, ​“I know you are very unhap­py, but I more so.” There’s no ret­ri­bu­tion for any of the women here.

The Por­trait of a Lady is also notable for the ways Cam­pi­on and Jones re-envi­sion James’ nov­el: Isabel’s world­wide trav­els, which take up a large part of the book, are dis­tilled into a silent film full of jerky, sped-up motion; while con­sid­er­ing her options, she fan­ta­sis­es about her three main suit­ors tak­ing her to bed at the same time, a bold dis­play of her pre-mar­i­tal auton­o­my; the film opens with young female voic­es dis­cussing the mean­ing of love before the cred­its play out over a group of thor­ough­ly mod­ern women frol­ick­ing in an idyl­lic green.

This urgent inter­pre­ta­tion of a deeply intro­spec­tive tale exem­pli­fies Campion’s devo­tion to show­ing women’s expe­ri­ences and strug­gles across all eras. Women’s sto­ries, alas, remain much the same across the cen­turies – but the dis­sec­tion of them should be as fierce and deter­mined as the hero­ines at their centre.