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Possession

2002

Neil LaBute

Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle ...

5.4

1,900

Drama. Romance Roland Michell is an American scholar trying to make it in the difficult world of British Academia. He has yet to break out from under his mentor's shadow until he finds a pair of love letters that once belonged to one of his idols, a famous Victorian poet. Michell, after some sleuthing, narrows down the suspects to a woman not his wife, another well known Victorian poet. Roland enlists the aid of a Dr. Maud Bailey, an expert on the ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"In a world where most movie romances consist of hormonal triggers and plumbing procedures, it's sexy to observe two couples who think and debate their connections, who quote poetry to each other (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	A. O. Scott The New York Times	"'Possession' is in the end an honorable, interesting failure. It falls far short of poetry, but it's not bad prose."	NEU
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Maud and Roland’s search for an unknowable past makes for a haunting literary detective story, but LaBute pulls off a neater trick in Possession: He makes language sexy."	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"AS Byatt's elegant literary detective novel has been reduced to one of the stupidest, most badly acted and clumsily directed films I have ever seen"	NEG
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"A passably engaging time-jumping romantic melodrama that at least grapples seriously with one of the novel’s most potent themes"	POS
United Kingdom	Jamie Russell BBC	"Lacking the intelligence of an arthouse picture, or the classy sheen of a British production, 'Possession' isn't possessed of anything other than over-wrought emotionalism and unintentional silliness (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"	NEG

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