Henry & June
by Philip Kaufman
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Fred Ward, Kevin Spacey, Maria de Medeiros, Richard E. Grant, Uma ThurmanDirector: Philip Kaufman
Brand: Universal Studios
Cinematographer: Philippe Rousselot
Writer: Philip Kaufman
Editor: Dede Allen
Producer: Peter Kaufman
Producer: Yannoulla Wakefield
Writer: Anaïs Nin
Writer: Rose Kaufman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 136 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-02-23
Audience Rating: NC-17
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Henry & June
Movie Review: art as pornography or vice versa?
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a film, based on lots of written materials from both Anais Nin and Henry Miller, about an extraordinary period in Paris of the 1930s. I love that city, and the film evokes it in all its unique beauty and ferment, with the fascist revolution of Germany in the background. For over 30 years, I have studied the Paris of that time, and this film is one of the best on it.
The theme of the film is Nin's erotic awakening, when as a meek though ambitious woman - kept by an unusually tolerant banker husband who is the only charicature in the film - she seeks lovers, both men and women. She is portrayed exceptionally well by de Medeiros, as a kind of proto-feminist and budding writer. The people she is drawn to are an unconventional couple, Miller and his bi-sexual wife, who are concerned with art and seeking the spark they once felt in eachother with others. While this is a common dilemma, the fact that they are artists in an amazing time makes their journey unique and stunningly vivid.
Things are more or less from the point of view of Nin, whose diaries are the principal source, with a dash of Miller thrown in. We watch her emerge from private pain and frustration with her dull, though loyal husband, seeking to forge a way for herself to ecstacy and totality. It is a grand experiment that, I must say, us mortals in conventional relationships will never understand, except perhaps in fantasy. She has the audacity to really do it, to live it. (Or so she syas.)
Nin is one of the first "moderns" whose lives are their work of art, whose actions and choices surpass their artistic output as a way of entering our imaginations. You can view them in many different ways: pioneers, simple egoists, or superior beings. What is great about them is how much they reflect of the history of our times, when so many certainties were breaking down as new (non-christian) ideologies were emerging. That makes this an exceptional film.
Uma Thurman is also brilliant as Miller's troubled wife. She has this indefinable air about her, a femme fatale who is also pathetic and vulnerable. While she hangs in the background, in many ways she is the character that controls the actions of the others, laughing at them while also suffering. This may be her greatest performance. She rules the climactic moment of the film.
While I fall into the camp that views these people as marginal narcissists and mediocre artists, this film is a wonderful snapshot in time. No matter who you are, you will react to it differently, in your own way and with your own vocabulary. That makes this a true work of art. It stimulates and provokes, but cannot be buttonholed.
Warmly recommended.
Summary of Henry & June
HENRY & JUNE - DVD MovieAnaïs Nin (Maria de Medeiros) is a young woman in 1930s Paris whose husband is slowly defecting from art to working in a bank, leaving her very bored. When the then-unpublished Brooklyn writer Henry Miller (Fred Ward) enters her life, she embarks on a journey of seduction and sexual exploration that eventually leads from the writer to his wife, June (Uma Thurman), who finances her husband's life in Paris so he may praise her beauty in his writing. Unhappy with her husband's writing and her lovers' affair, June enters a jealous rage, forcing Henry into suffering-artist mode and Nin back to her husband. Despite having one of the more erotic scenes of the 1990s, between Nin and June, the film does not live up to its subject, largely due to a mediocre screenplay and flawed direction. The strength of the original material and Medeiros's decidedly unflawed performance, however, make it worth viewing. --James McGrath
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