Running time: 102 minutes
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Aaron Eckhart, Holly Aird, Lena Headey, Toby Stephens, Trevor Eve
Rating 6 out of 10
Writer-director Neil LaBute is an unlikely candidate to adapt AS Byatt's Booker Prize-winning romance for the big screen. His previous films - In The Company Of Men, Your Friends And Neighbours and Nurse Betty - have been provocative and coruscating studies of human nature, laced with violence, misogyny and dark humour. However, Possession has evidently mellowed LaBute, because his film is both delicate and beautiful, examining the very notion of romance through two couples, living almost 200 years apart.
American scholar Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) visits the British Museum to research a paper on renowned Victorian poet laureate Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam). Whilst scouring various dusty volumes and manuscripts, Roland uncovers a long lost love letter from the wordsmith to a mystery woman.
The recipient is clearly not the Ash's doting wife, Ellen (Holly Aird), suggesting that the poet was not always the devoted husband and family man. Roland's investigations lead him to believe that Ash had an affair with feminist writer Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle), and he turns to renowned expert Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) to help him prove his theory.
Maud is resistant to Roland's ideas, initially because she loathes American bravado, but also because he would discredit her own work, documenting LaMotte's lesbian affair with Blanche Glover (Lena Headey). In spite of herself, Maud agrees to accompany Roland around Britain, gathering the evidence they need, visiting the LaMotte estate to pore over old letters for any indication of an illicit liaison with Ash.
The two scholars become increasingly immersed in their work, and the normally commitment-shy Roland finds himself attracted to Maud, who is currently dating fellow academic Fergus Wolfe (Toby Stephens).
LaBute and co-writers David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones have worked miracles condensing AS Byatt's sprawling text (a weighty 511 pages) into a trim 102 minutes, without sacrificing any of the key themes.
Possession delights in the sensuousness of the English language, and makes Roland and Maud's investigations seem genuinely thrilling, as they race against ruthless collector Cropper (Trevor Eve) to unearth the truth of Ash and LaMotte's forbidden past. Eckhart finally proves his mettle as a charming yet vulnerable leading man.
Paltrow delivers another flawless English accent, and the sexual tension between the pair is electric as Roland and Maud begin their own romance, mirroring the torrid affair of their 19th century subjects.
The film elegantly cuts back and forth between the two time frames, and contrasts the two relationships, and the seemingly insurmountable hurdles which stand in the paths of the would-be lovers: stifling Victorian morality, and a crippling fear of commitment. The differences are highlighted also in the art direction and costumes: the 19th century is depicted as a rich, colourful and gaudy age, where raging passions smoulder beneath the corseted surface. By stark contrast, the 21st century is emotionally cold and drained of colour, reflected in the nervousness of Roland and Maud's courtship.
