LaBute's Possession

In films that jump between the present and the past, the past often seems both more real and more cinematic. Why? Maybe because such films exist to remind us that the present comes from the past, and in any kind of story, the beginning is almost always more interesting than the "present." Even The Godfather, Part II, arguably the greatest modern film to crosscut between two periods, comes most blazingly alive in the early 20th-century New York sequences, with their wall-to-wall subtitles, sepia-tinted images of Little Italy and thrillingly primitive talk of tribute and vengeance. In comparison, the modern stuff seems colder, more analytical, sadder.

Possession, a new drama from writer-director Neil LaBute, cowritten with David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones, is all about the difference between present and past. Specifically, it's about the differences between upper-middle-class Western life in the mid-19th century and today. It's also two love stories unfolding simultaneously, each commenting on the other. In the present, literary scholars Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) come across a literary detective story that requires them to delve into the past-specifically, the past of poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam). Michell stumbles onto his mission during routine research at a university library, where he uncovers an unfinished love letter suggesting that the very married Ash might have had an affair in the 1850s with poet Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). The pot-sweetener: LaMotte is believed to have been a lesbian.

Maud, a somewhat aloof, guarded Brit, joins the less fussy but equally guarded Roland in a quest that retraces many of Ash and LaMotte's steps; they even stay at the same country inn as did their quarry, and are forced to share a room with a single bed. (It's been a while since I've seen that gag in a movie, and it's so old-fashioned that it made me smile a little.) Will love blossom between these two screwed-up modern academics? Will it equal in passion the past love that inspired their adventure in the first place? You know the answer to both questions is "Yes." The only mystery is how the story will get to its preordained destination, and whether you'll stay interested along the way.

Possession keeps you interested, but sometimes only mildly. The flashback stuff is powerful, as flashback stuff often is. Northam, who was groomed as a leading man for a while but now seems more like a Nick Nolte-Jeff Bridges type (a character actor in a movie star's body), is simple and unaffected as Ash, whose heart and loins lead him to make decisions his brain keeps warning him against. Ehle is both visually striking (with her milky skin, dark hair and skeptical, inquisitive eyes) and fun to watch. She seems more alert than the characters that surround her; it's like she's having an out-of-body experience just being alive. When they come together in bed, LaBute shoots their sex simply and cuts away as soon as he can justify it, but the moment is still powerful; they're like a couple of prisoners enjoying an illicit moment of freedom.

In comparison (big surprise) the present-day scenes don't quite measure up. I appreciated the steady intelligence of LaBute's direction. It's a bit too tasteful, like something Merchant-Ivory might attempt if they were 30 and just getting into the film business today, but it puts the story and characters front-and-center instead of showcasing the director's cleverness, and it's a lot more fleet-footed than anything LaBute has attempted before. In In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors-both of which were fashionably cynical and cruel-he seemed to think of the camera mainly as a recording device. The compositions were elegant but flat, like modern realistic paintings-studied in the worst way. There's more movement this time, and finer gradations of color. Here, as in Nurse Betty, LaBute seems to be exploring ways in which the camera can suggest the interiors of people's lives without actually entering their heads.

But is it just me, or has LaBute traded misanthropy for listlessness? There were more than a few moments in Possession that made me sleepy, and they all occurred during the present day. Eckhart, who comes alive when he's playing a heel (In the Company of Men), a slob (Your Friends and Neighbors) or a working-class stud (Erin Brockovich), seems sadly constrained here. I'm sorry to say this, since it's hurtful to any actor, but I just couldn't buy him as the academic type. The clipped, elegant banter that tumbles out of his mouth sounded unnatural to me-even scripted at times. With her lilting accent, warily hungry eyes and swan's neck, Paltrow fares better-but then, she always does. She's the Sam Mendes of actors-so accomplished and enjoyable at such an early age that she pretty much invites critics to hate her. Still, this could be the movie that engenders a full-scale anti-Paltrow backlash. It's not that she's bad-as usual, she's quite smart and fun. The role mainly requires her to be likable yet pinched, and to gradually warm up as the story unfolds. You know she can do that, and she does it. The problem is that, by this point, Paltrow has played so many Grace-Kelly roles that they're all starting to blur together. And if Eckhart is unconvincing as an American academic and Paltrow is so convincing as a British academic that you can't get excited about her, that leaves Possession with two main selling points: the flashback portion of the story, and LaBute and Byatt's thoughts on the differences between love and sex, then and now. Both selling points are all right, but they're not meaty enough to carry a movie.

If Possession sounds rather like The French Lieutenant's Woman, well, join the club. But while A.S. Byatt's source novel, which I haven't read, was credited with being stylistically and thematically different from Fowles' story, the two movies create an echo-chamber effect in one's memory-and it's not complimentary to Possession. When the film version of The French Lieutenant's Woman came out more than two decades ago, it was damned with faint praise in most quarters and flat-out damned in others. Many critics felt it was visually entrancing and well-acted, but too cold and schematic, and that it pointed out the differences between past and present mores in too exaggerated and simplistic a way. (The Victorian lovers were almost completely repressed and felt everything intensely; the modern-day actors playing those characters in a movie were not repressed at all, yet seemed to feel nothing.) LaBute's film is cut from similar cloth; in fact, it echoes Fowles' novel, and the Karel Reisz-Harold Pinter movie version, so frankly that you can't help smiling at the director's confidence. (It's like he's fessing up to the resemblance, then promising to up the ante.) Ehle, who plays the lusty woman straitjacketed by her times, facially and vocally resembles Streep in Woman, and the resemblance is furthered by the thin, dark hood framing her face; there's even a sea wall where characters can go to deliver important dialogue while the surf pounds mercilessly behind them.

Like John Sayles in Lone Star LaBute makes the past-present connection explicit by transitioning from one to the other without cutting; sometimes he'll get us from one era to the next simply by moving the camera to reveal a character who (we think) should not be there. LaBute also hammers home the idea of modern people being more self-aware and self-critical than people who lived more than a century ago. It's too effective. At times, I found myself wishing the movie would cut to the past again just so I wouldn't have to hear the modern-day characters complaining about how self-aware and self-critical they are. Possession should possess the audience, but it's too critical, too disengaged-hell, too self-possessed-to try.