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JAMES IN HEAT Henry James's fancy, elongated prose is amongst American literature's most romantically decadent. His extraordinary gift is in using syntax as masturbatory word play: without ever getting explicit, and without ever getting to some rewarding conclusions, he manipulates his way into our forbidden zone of private thought that is unnerving; we're spooked by what and how much he knows about us. But James isn't sexy; he's a highly structured parlor host who gentlemanly downplays the libidinous, and this, more than the academic guessing of what he really means in what he writes, is why most movie versions of his work don't excite us—the moviemakers applaud themselves for having shown their respect for him, instead of really getting off on him. This may be why Iain Softley's movie of The Wings of the Dove, despite considerable alteration, is the most satisfying Jamesian movie since Jack Clayton's The Innocents. Softley has elevated James' parlor games to a very festering sexiness—he's dared to show James in heat. Of course purists will argue that Mrs. Lowder is for all intents and purposes gone, and that Venice's overpowering ambiance usurps just about everything else. Might be worth a reprimand if Softley and scripter Hossein Amini hadn't superbly truncated Lowder via Charlotte Rampling and hadn't two actors who enhance James' prettified hothouse atmosphere. Helena Bonham Carter—her pale, sickly white skin superbly contrasted in smoldering darks by costumer Sandy Powell—gives one of those rare “all looks” performances; you sense you know this woman named Kate almost immediately as you catch sight of her in a commuter train when she watches an overcoat gently dangling like a semi-soft penis. And you're not at all surprised what happens shortly after in an elevator. She's so “prodigiously” Jamesian that nothing is allowed to get in her way—except James. Though her first love scene with Linus Roache as Merton suggests a lift from Fatal Attraction, there's no questioning the mutal attraction; these two waste not a moment establishing their linkage—their socially spoiled baggage. With a nearly sculptured nose and a chin missing flesh, Roache is James' wrinkled-suited offering as a sacrifice to social privilege. In James' customary convolutions, however, Merton's not entirely a reluctant offering and Roache grants a view of him as heroic temp who provides wish fulfillment to Alison Elliott's Milley before the tentacles of grief and jealousy catch up to him. Elliott is beset by her resemblance to Amy Irving; not fatal but a close call. Oscar nominations for Amini's screenplay, Powell's costumes, Eduardo Serra's photography and Bonham Carter's leading actress performance, which was cited as the year's best by close to a dozen critics' associations. The effective music by Edward Shearmur. If the green and blue tiled house used for the party looks familiar, it's Denbenham, prominently on view in Secret Ceremony. Text COPYRIGHT © 2000 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved.
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