Not everyone can be Merchant and Ivory, too bad this team didn't realize this. It took 2 tries to even get through it... I walked out of the theater on first viewing. Well the second wasn't much better. So much waisted talent, source material, set design. I do blame the director. This is an absolute mess! Even the characters are forgettable, the scenes far too long, the pace horrible slow. I'm trying to write enough lines to get this review in, but what is there to say, its just a bad film all the way around. a bad film a good story but a bad film. Don't waste your time. Seek another film of this period to enjoy.

A dreadful version of the great novel. Shame on you Laura Jones. Shame on the director for depicting Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) as a rather plain, uninteresting young woman with a goofy hairdo. What can possibly attract all of those men who want to marry her? And the ending was completely unsatisfactory. A much better way of telling this story, since James' prose is so rich with internal motivations and feelings which cannot easily be revealed by dialogue or even by facial expressions, would be to have voice-over. This would have allowed for a much improved climax. There are only two commendable elements here. One is the cinematography and the other actor John Malkovich, who portrayed a superb Osmond.

This film is about a wealthy American heiress and her romantic pursuits of varying success in Europe."The Portrait of a Lady" is immensely dull. The pace is slower than a snail, with many self indulgent artistic shots in between the already very slow plot. To make it even more boring, every character delivers their line in a flat and monotonous way. That may be the way how upper class speaks, but it is terribly dull and emotionless in a film. There is no emotional climax in the film either, everything is just plain and boring. Even the plethora of big stars can do nothing to save this film from being a bore.

I must say this first: Jane Campion is one of my absolute favorite directors and this is her most thoroughly worked-through piece of film yet and perhaps even her best film. (She has only had one failure and that was In the Cut, which instead was really bad.)Saying this it goes without saying that i am astonished over the low rating on this movie, here at IMDb; it just tells you in the end that you can never be sure on what other people feel.The Portrait of Lady, based on the brilliant 19C novel by Henry James, tells the story of a young orphaned woman, Isabelle Archer, who is taken under the wing by an aunt and later an uncle and a cousin, and brought to Europe. Being a woman "fond of her own ways" and her personal freedom, Isabelle guards her future very well; she declines a couple of favorable marriages in favour of her own independence. As she inherits money and becomes self sufficient, she travels through Europe and soon comes to realize that independence is quite a hard position to guard, and far more difficult to manage that in real life than just having the young persons idea of it. Her travels becomes a journey of maturity and struggle with herself.What James novel so brilliantly exhibits is the mechanics of a mind of a young person, even a person of any age; and James does this so balanced.Campions film in turn, takes on the essentials from the novel, drags it through a bit of Freud and end up with a version that transcends the barriers of time, up to our days. What Campion succeeds with is to modernize the novel; make it more accessible to a modern audience; and in the end, to portray what another costume piece did, Orlando; transcendence.She does so with a brilliant cast (amaze yourself over the actors involved above!!) with Nicole Kidman in the lead as Isabelle. Others, to mention a few is Martin Donovan as her cousin Ralph, Richard E Grant as Lord Warbuton (like cut from the from the novel!! Brilliant!!), John Malkoviich as Osmond, Barbara Hershey as Madame Merle and John Gielgod (also brilliant here; so downplayed). All actors are brilliant, mentioned or not.Although I really like Marin Donovan, who I think is a much neglected actor, it would have been interesting to see Malkovich as the consumptive cousin Ralph; the part was originally offered to him but got lost somewhere...).Campion also have the magnificent help of cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, who makes it possible to to render the movie its pictorial qualities, and in the end its total art impression, instead of just a costume drama.Personally I like the Piano but it is reportedly to be only a prior sketch to this one.My recommendation is SEE IT, no matter what judgment has been passed on it on these pages.