Possession: Two Love Stories for the Price of One
Was utterly possessed by this for 102 minutes at the Tricycle last night with S. Tricycle still empty - twelve people in a three hundred seat cinema: I just don't get it. I'm sure Staples Corner and the 02 centre were heaving, and this is a nicer cinema, with famous people hanging about in the bar.
I've never read an AS Byatt novel - nor, for that matter, a Margaret Drabble (her feuding half-sister) either - and I really want to now. It's a girl movie, for sure, and although P informs me that Neil LaBute is interested in misogyny - which is certainly a themette to the movie - it has a balanced approach to representing gender and exploring human relationships. It's the tale of two contemporary literary academics sleuthing their way into a long lost love affair, and is utterly laden with coincidence. Which I guess has to happen, otherwise, stories go on forever, right?
Anyway, I'd certainly recommend it, if you want a double love story, sharp script and beautiful English countryside. Although the contemporary couple get really, really angst ridden, and there's not enough backstory to make it believable, and even though Gwyneth is an academic on a presumably meagre salary, she manages to have an amazingly stylish flat, with a Victorian roll-top bath, and expensive bathroom-bubbly stuff. As well as only one set of pyjamas. And while we're at it, I don't think she would drive an old Saab, I think she's more beaten up mini or MGB. And whilst we're picking holes, Aaron goes up north for an afternoon with a small book bag, ends up going on like a weeklong trip, without even taking a toothbrush or change of clothes. And then when Gwynnie drops him at the station, he's "grown" an overnight bag. Also, when Jeremy and Jennifer are having very stylish Victorian sex, her nightgown is arranged in such a way that he couldn't possibly get his bits, er, in. I know, I should be in continuity.
IMDB ephemera: the music is by Gabriel Yared, who did the mesmerising score to Betty Blue in 1986. So there.
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