Lush and literate, Neil LaBute’s Possession is two love stories for the price of one, unfolding simultaneously in different centuries. It is risky, intelligent, romantic and rapturous from start to finish. In the hollow summer of 2002, I’d call it something of a miracle.
Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) is an ambitious American with a fellowship at the British Museum who accidentally discovers a long-lost love letter he believes was sent by Queen Victoria’s poet laureate, Randolph Henry Ash, to the controversial feminist Christabel LaMotte. Being a brazen and unscrupulous Yank, he filches it and takes it to Dr. Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), a brilliant academic who is both appalled and skeptical. She’s been researching the life of this legendary Victorian nonconformist for years.
Randolph was a starchy, stable, conservative family man whose letters to his wife will soon be the focus of a centennial museum celebration of his life and work. Christabel was a bohemian author and liberated lesbian who was years ahead of her time. There is no evidence that the two poets ever met, much less slept together. If true, this discovery could be a sensation in the academic world. The deeper they delve into the journals, diaries and correspondence of Randolph’s wife Ellen and Christabel’s lover Blanche, the closer they get to opening a new door in their own lives. Tracing the footsteps of two icons from another century—even sleeping in the same country inn where the clandestine lovers met and made love—the two moderns, who have vowed never to become emotionally involved, begin to lower their defenses and relive history.
As they reluctantly find each other, the film shifts in time to the Victorian love story with elegance, charm and period costumes that take the breath away. Ms. Paltrow, cool and patrician, and Mr. Eckhart, scruffy and vulnerable, make an extremely sexy pair of contemporary lovers, while Jennifer Ehle, looking like Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and Jeremy Northam, in his Oscar Wilde waistcoats, do more with their facial expressions than their actions. Sometimes the two worlds merge only a few feet apart, and the parallels between 1859 and today prove that in affairs of the heart, both periods are remarkably similar: The two stories begin with curiosity and move into stages of passion and tragedy. The equation between the two sets of characters and the two societies finds a perfect balance, as the present often becomes an unexpected mirror to the past. The stunningly complex fusion of Austen complicity and Pinter obsession can be both warm and wrenching.
Mr. LaBute may seem, on the surface, a surprising choice to bring A.S. Byatt’s prize-winning source material to the screen, since his films have always been more about sexual power than romantic love. But the direction is meticulous, the study in contrasts is fascinating, and the film makes a convincing argument that sexual politics between men and women haven’t changed much, regardless of the time frame in which they occur. The two sets of lovers are perfectly cast, the performances are piercingly true, and Mr. LaBute’s tender, nonjudgmental approach pays handsome dividends. The message, finally, is "Love is worth the risk." After the battles, the victories and losses in this remarkable film cannot fail to leave you shaken. Possession opens on Aug. 16. Put it at the top of your must-see list. Trust me on this; you’ll be glad you did.