Nicole Kidman Tribute: The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

by Nathaniel R

Madame Merle: I'd give a good deal to be your age again; to have my life before me.
Isabel Archer: Your life is before you yet.

This article was originally intended to grace our "How Had I Never Seen?" series. Jane Campion's The Portrait  of a Lady (1996) has stubbornly remained on my "to see" list for nearly twenty years. I let it sit there, as a shamefully passive intent, not unlike the way Isabel Archer approached her own 'to experience' lists past the age of 24. That's when she marries Mr Osmond in Henry James "The Portrait of a Lady" and her idealism and ambition are utterly flatted by the limits of her imagination, courage, and self-possession. The novel first appeared in serialized form in 1880 and for the following century and a half, Isabel Archer has confounded and/or fascinated readers; Fellow artists, too, like auteur Jane Campion and actress Nicole Kidman...

Following the international success of her biggest hit and most celebrated vision, The Piano (1993), Jane Campion could surely have made anything. Nicole Kidman was on the rise, too, with a plethora of offers having captured the attention of audiences, the industry, and critics (though not quite yet all three at once) with a series of modestly successful Hollywood efforts (Far and Away, Malice), unchallenging blockbusters (Batman Forever, Days of Thunder), Australian gems (Flirting, Dead Calm) and two performances that captured awards buzz (To Die For, Billy Bathgate).

a deft double image at the crossroads of possibility. Isabel makes an innocuous but life changing choice and reaches for a door knob.

Both women chose the notoriously difficult Isabel Archer as their next subject, so you can't fault either artist for lack of ambition. Like the titular protagonist, though, you might say that their reach exceeded their grasp. 

Why hadn't I seen it back then, nosey readers might be asking? It's as simple as this: I wasn't yet a Kidmaniac and I wasn't yet living in NYC where my cinephilia was easy to feed. Following the disappointing critical reception for the film, it sank on my list of immediate priorities with only Barbara Hershey's (deserved) Best Supporting Actress nomination as a draw. The first Nicole Kidman film I had ever seen was Days of Thunder (on VHS - yes, I'm aging myself) and I shamefully let that color my impression of her for years, viewing her primarly as 'Mrs. Tom Cruise'. I later rented Dead Calm and Flirting and was more impressed if not converted. But the first two of her films that I saw in theaters, Batman Forever and To Die For (in short succession) had a whiplash effect qualitatively. Due to the former I didn't know whether to attribute her brilliance in the latter to Gus Van Sant (then at the peak of his powers). I hadn't yet sussed out what became quite obvious very soon thereafter: Nicole Kidman is an Auteurist Vessel / Character Actor in the shape of a Glorious Movie Star. (Kidmania struck in 2001 but the actress has always been exceedingly prolific so catching up with her earlier work never felt as pressing as merely keeping up with her in the now.)

an intrusive introduction, pushing right into Kidman's eyeballs

Such a longwinded prologue is incongruous to the movie, though. The Portrait of a Lady jumps right in to central mystery of Isabel Archer's interiority.  The first scene is a proposal in which Isabel (Nicole Kidman) rejects a real catch in rich, kind, progressive suitor Lord Warburton (Richard E Grant) on the sensibly feminist if dreamy grounds that she's young and wants to experience life and see the world rather than be defined by a man. Campion is so desperate to get inside this woman that she pushes the camera in as tightly as she can, right in to the red veins of Kidman's eyeballs. Let those mesmerizing peepers serve as a skittish darting road map to Isabel's psyche. Campion shoots the first moment and Kidman acts it as if Isabel is prey and utterly terrified of Warburton's approaching predator. But that's not how the scene plays out at all and not the reality of their characters.

An erotic internal reverie with Isabel's three suitors (Viggo Mortensen, Richard E Grant, Martin Donovan)

Throughout the first act, Kidman leans so strongly into Isabel's idealistic naivety, and flirtatious 'maybe I'll never marry' posturing, that that first moment of terror feels outrageously misunderstood by the viewer rather than misjudged on the actresses part just a few scenes later. It's a delightful subversivion; What Miss Archer most fears in the early passages is not men or marriage, but being misunderstood (listen closely to those tetchy mixed-message line readings in her scenes with suitors) and betraying her youthful wanderlust. Her fears may be valid but they're entirely misdirected. She's the one who'll be doing the misunderstanding and caging, in an elaborate life long self-sabotage.

Yes, yes, Mr. Gilbert Osmond, Isabel's horribly sexist and scheming future husband (John Malkovich reprising Valmont minus the joy and wit towards his own duplicity) and his ex-lover and fellow golddigger Madame Serena Merle (an incredible Barbara Hershey) are the "villains" of the piece, narratively speaking. But Henry James' fame is due in large part to the psychological complexity of his work and its Isabel that's "the problem." She marches right into the conventional patriarchal traps for women despite the potentially liberating escape door of her progressive nature, her great beauty, and her vast wealth. People have been analyzing Isabel Archer for 144 years now and Campion and Kidman add to the valuable discourse even if their take feels hesitant in its cumulative effect and far from definitive. 

'My Journey 1873'

The film is strongest in its first act when Kidman is playing with Isabel's alarming lack of self- awareness, and her mixed-messages to friends and would-be lovers. Simultaneously, Jane Campion is harnessing all three of her most familiar key strengths as a filmmaker: inventive visual storytelling (the catacomb sequence is hypnotic even as it ends by poking fun at the visual signifiers of hypnotism), idiosyncratic but thematically sound humor (that black and white 'My Journey' interlude is top-notch) and truly tactile image-making (you can feel the brush of fingertips and curtain fringe in the masturbatory fantasy wherein she surrounds Isabel with all three of her suitors, any of which would have made a far happier marriage than the one she defiantly chooses.)

But like Isabel herself, who watches helplessly as the cage she locked herself in constricts, the film also shrinks until it has nowhere to go but an indecisive freeze frame. The problems begin with the four year time jump to the film's middle act. Promising young Isabel Archer is now depressed Mrs Osmond and has been for the entire time. While it's a faithful adaptation of the book's narrative leap, it strands Kidman into Before and After mode when what we really need from her interpretation of Isabel is the connective tissue necessary for a satisfying arc and a point of view. 

It's not that I won't. I simply can't.

It's not that Kidman's playing is ever false or unformed in the second and third acts. In fact she has many fine moments. She's particularly strong in her passive aggressive subterfuge around Lord Warburton's courtship of her step-daughter Pansy (Valenti Cervi). Six years into her Hollywood career, Kidman is already a formidable screen presence (even if audiences, including myself, hadn't quite clocked the range and potency of her gift). She's watchable in every moment of Isabel's tragic devolution from Bright Young Girl to Stifled Woman in a Gilded Cage. Kidman's error, though that feels like too dismissive a word, is akin to Meryl Streep's in French Lieutenant's Woman at a similarly positioned career moment. Here's a truly formidable actress that audiences are still "meeting" playing each scene for everything she can find in it but often working too hard to play it rather than living inside it. The result is exciting on the surface but less so at the center, overtly actressy and thus resistant to a truly internal shaping of character.

The "error" I'm attempting to describe is most evident in the film's final act, a series of six duet confrontations with ostensibly supporting characters in Isabel's life some of whom have taken more aggressive protagonist-like action than she has with her life. In all six vignettes, these characters spell out the tragedy for blind Isabel: her sister-in-law Countess Gemini (Shelley Duvall) opens her eyes to confront the nefarious trap she walked into years earlier; Her husband calls her out on her deceit about the Warburton business (which she still refuses to see as such) and demands that she stay miserable for his sake and ignore her own emotional needs; Her stepdaughter Pansy (now in a convent) states so baldly that she'll sacrifice her happiness and only live to serve her father, that Isabel is forced to see her own self-abjecting choice mirrored back at her; Her frenemy Madame Merle attempts to apologize for her part in Isabel's misery while spilling the beans about where all that money came from; Her cousin/benefector Ralph Touchett (a strong Martin Donovan) admits to the same while spelling out his disappointment with her choices. Oh, what she could have been!; Finally her indefatigable suitor Caspar Goodwood (Viggo Mortensen) tries yet again to woo her away from her marriage, plainly reading the situation and explaining the escape clause.  In each of the sequences the actress works for tragedy, cathartic release, or dawning horror. Unfortunately in all of these climactic scenes, the other actor is either the grounding center or the truth teller, leaving Kidman to twist about, stuck in the quicksand of Isabel's maddening passivity and misery. 

I don't understand you.

This is especially true in the strongest of these scenes when Isabel and Serena finally come face-to-face with secrets bared. In so many ways Barbara Hershey has a clearer character arc to play, but Serena's psychology is no less fascinating than Isabel's. Hershey circles her prey and her character with perpetual psychological precision and she's riveting even at Serena's most opaque. When Kidman's Isabel proclaims "I don't understand you" to this horrible woman she idolized and thought a dear friend, it's relatable but not a devastation. My mind lept forward several years to Birth (2004) and Kidman's perfect line reading of "You're a little liar, aren't you?". In both cases the line is directed to another character who has proved her undoing. Yet in both, the line is stronger as a dark mirror to her own mysteries. Who is this woman really? Why is she doing the things she does?.

While Kidman is already a strong actor in 1996, she's not quite yet the masterful interpreter she would soon become in her astonishing early Aughts run (Moulin Rouge!, The Others, The Hours, Dogville, and Birth). Here she pushes for surface tragedy when a retreat way way way back into the unfathomable recesses of Mrs Isabel Osmond's headspace, was exactly where she needed to be -- so deep that we might actually find young Miss Archer again. Kidman would have reached that elusive vanishing target had she made this same movie just a few years later. She'd have forced her away inside with as much intent and force as Campion's first disquieting camera move. 

Previously in the Nicole Kidman TFE Tribute: 

• Introductiom (1983-1989) - Early Australian films
• Billy Bathgate (1991) – her first Golden Globe nomination!
• Malice (1993) - when Kidman met Sorkin
• To Die For (1995) - her first Golden Globe win!
• Practical Magic (1998)  - comfort food cinema
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999)- Kubrick. Cruise. Kidman

Next, we finally arrive at Nicole Kidman's first Oscar nomination. 

Comments

[thevoid99]

This is a film that I feel is vastly underrated and needs to be on the Criterion Collection as I think it's a great follow-up to The Piano as it's a different film featuring Nicole raising her game. There's also a young Christian Bale who is amazing in this as well.

[liza memozi]

Hours of delicious fun await those who are both seasoned puzzle enthusiasts and casual gamers seeking light entertainment with the quordle game.

[Mr Ripley79]

This was delicious,as a long time reader of 20 plus years and after multiple Kidman posts i've always wanted to know as a huge Kidman fan what our host thought of my favourite Kidman performance,he once said he'd never seen it many years ago.

I love the film despite the flaws you point out,Campion often seems to be showing off

It's an interesting reading of the film but I see what you are saying about the lack of a thread connecting the first Isabel and the later beaten down version and Nicole not going deep enough,I dont see that but can see why someone would feel that way

I have it watched at least 10 times..

I am not the greatest fan of Malkovich but he does what he needs to do but you always wonder why Isabel doesn't see right through him,he has zero charm and sex appeal.

The cast is quirky to say the least Winters,Gielgud,Donovan,Duvall,Bale,Mortensen.

You chose my favourite quote from this film also,I was obsessed with the trailer and used to watch it on repeat on a free video I got with a magazine.

I can't agree that she's better in The Others,Dogville or Birth.

She's a frustraing ultimate likeable character and the film is rewatchable because of that,I always get something new from each character.

Hershey gives for me the Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominated performance of all time,I love everything about Madame Merle and find her performance fascinating.

I can't imagine what first choice Susan Sarandon would have been like as Merle.

The score is great too almost like a horror movie in places.

[Peggy Sue]

Tempted to vote for Hershey in 96.

[Angelo]

LOVE this film and her in it. Glad to see it has its fans.

[Drew]

Although the Piano is considered to be Jane Campion's masterpiece, sometimes i feel like preferring this although I love both.
Even with the weaknesses that Nathaniel mentioned above, I felt like this is a much bigger swing for Campion and I always feel that this is her most elegant movie.
Nicole and the rest of supporting cast is excellent except for Malkovich which I think played his character incorrectly.