This film is well-made, but there is a severity or coldness about it which is false to the temperament of the novel by Henry James on which it is based. Not so much in the portrayal of Gilbert Osmund by John Malkovich (although he brings to it his trademark air of sick malevolence, it seems excessive, not quite in key, even for the evil Gilbert Osmund), but very much so in the manner in which the heroine, Isabel Archer, is represented. In the novel she is a creature of passion; in the film, she is quite rightly adrift (true to the original) but altogether too much in the manner of an iceberg off the English coast rather than as an American "jeune fille" in sunny Italy. What passion she is given has a tortuous, fantastic character, represented by skewed hallucinations rather than by the robust erotic musings of innocent naiveté.
Consequently, the movie ambles along, technically perfect but ultimately boring. Characters who appear to be bored and indifferent to their own lives not surprisingly fail to rouse in the audience any compensating interest. Ironically, it is given to the veteran actor John Gielgud (albeit perhaps unwittingly) to pronounce judgment upon this film in his character's dying scene: as Isabel fixes upon him an intent gaze, rapt with the serious business of grasping to her bosom a pearl of wisdom from this aged man poised on the brink of his ultimate odyssey, Gielgud emits as his final word-to-the-wise an elaborate yawn. In this curious version of James's energetic novel even death is a bore.
Consequently, the movie ambles along, technically perfect but ultimately boring. Characters who appear to be bored and indifferent to their own lives not surprisingly fail to rouse in the audience any compensating interest. Ironically, it is given to the veteran actor John Gielgud (albeit perhaps unwittingly) to pronounce judgment upon this film in his character's dying scene: as Isabel fixes upon him an intent gaze, rapt with the serious business of grasping to her bosom a pearl of wisdom from this aged man poised on the brink of his ultimate odyssey, Gielgud emits as his final word-to-the-wise an elaborate yawn. In this curious version of James's energetic novel even death is a bore.