Portrait of A Lady (1996)

“Things are always different from what they might be.” – Mr. Touchett

Number of Times Seen – 1 (15 Apr 2019)

Brief Synopsis – After inheriting a lot of money, a young woman must try to maneuver around those who wish to take advantage of her new prominent wealth.

My Take on it – This is yet another period drama that I had no desire to watch yet felt compelled to do so since one of its cast was nominated for an Oscar for her work here.

This is a really boring and tedious film that has a very strange plot that doesn’t work very well.

It’s not an easy film to get through because it is paced extremely slowly and at 2 and a half hours is much too long.

Nicole Kidman plays the title role and is really overbearing in this role which makes it so hard to acre about her or anything that happens to her along the way.

The supporting characters also aren’t developed well enough and the story doesn’t seem to progress much but instead feels as if it is constantly going in circles.

In addition to KIdman, this film has a very talented cast, but they are all pretty much wasted here.

One would expect that a film featuring John Malkovich, Barbara Hershey, Martin Donovan, Mary Louise-Parker, Shelley Winters, Richard E. Grant, Shelly Duvall, Christian Bale, Viggo Mortensen and John Gielguld would be better but this film doesn’t manage to be interesting enough largely due to the way things are presented here.

Hershey was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work here yet didn’t manage to win.

Bottom Line – Really boring and tedious period drama that is quite hard to get through because it moves along so slowly. Kidman is overbearing in the lead and its hard to care about her or any of the other characters as things constantly seem to be moving in cyclical directions instead of moving forward. Besides Kidman, this film has a very talented cast, but they are completely wasted here because of the way that they choose to present things along the way. Hershey was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance here yet failed to win.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Nicole Kidman spent two weeks in bed after filming wrapped, diagnosed as suffering from “emotional stress” (From IMDB)

Rating – Razzie Worthy (3/10)