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Possession
Focus Features


7.2

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 14 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sexuality and some thematic elements

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle, Trevor Eve, Toby Stephens, and Anna Massey

Set in the present day, this is the story of two poetry scholars (Eckhart, Paltrow) who discover that the subjects of their studies were secret lovers. As they research the mysterious relationship, they develop a romance of their own.

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	David Henry Hwang Laura Jones Neil LaBute A.S. Byatt (novel)
DIRECTED BY:	Neil LaBute
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 11, 2003 Video: February 11, 2003 Theatrical: August 16, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	103 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

LaBute, in his infinite and marvelous wrongness, infuses his movie with a delicacy of feeling that couldn't be more right for the material. LaBute obviously approached the project with his hands and his heart open: Frame by frame, it's a humble picture, a movie that isn't afraid to be an entertainment.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

LaBute likes people who think themselves into and out of love, and finds the truly passionate (like Blanche) to be the most dangerous. He likes romances that exist out of sight, denied, speculated about, suspected, fought against.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

I was wooed by its sexy romanticism all the way through to the mysterious and beautiful coda.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Maud and Roland's search for an unknowable past makes for a haunting literary detective story, but LaBute pulls off a neater trick in Possession: He makes language sexy.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The highlights are the writing and the performances. There are real laughs to be had -- several scenes end on sharp, witty shards of dialogue. And whenever Eckhart, Northam or Ehle is the focus, the thing soars.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Compelling material, especially for those who believe that the lives and loves of the dead can impact the trajectory of the existences of the living.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A lush, genteel romance of the Merchant-Ivory school that qualifies as a guilty pleasure -- largely because of the unexpected chemistry between its improbably matched leads, Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart.

Wall Street Journal Nancy deWolf Smith

A romance, a detective story, a comedy and a fable. Such a mishmash prevents it from being a standout in any of those categories. -- It's lovely to look at, though, and it's ultimately carried to success on the back of a strong story.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

What Possession reminds us more than anything is that love is more exotic at the safe remove of history. The irony is that LaBute is more at home chronicling the present, yet that's where this movie falls apart.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

It is entertaining enough to send intelligent viewers (but only the intelligent ones) in search of the book.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Possession needs a sharp eye, a wicked tongue, less reverence and much more of its author's voice.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Some books just aren't meant to be movies -- what once was confidently distinguished now seems merely average and a tiny bit desperate.

Time Richard Corliss

When Possession finds its true home, lodging in the convulsive certitude of Victorian romance, it does indeed catch fire -- and warms any viewer in the mood for love.

Slate David Edelstein

A wee, breezy thing with painterly cinematography (by Jean Yves Escoffier) and with actors who are mostly fun to watch. It sails by in 103 minutes and the clunky stuff isn't painful, which makes a change from LaBute's usual grueling studies in human callousness and depravity.

Variety Todd McCarthy

LaBute has had middling success at best, having come up with a passably engaging time-jumping romantic melodrama that at least grapples seriously with one of the novel's most potent themes.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Ultimately comes off as so restrained as to be detached and almost as chilly as LaBute's darker films -- not exactly what one would want from a story about a love so strong that it echoes through the ages.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film wants to be "The English Patient" but doesn't have the elements that made that film a classic: sensitivity, perfect casting, a unique visual style and, underlying its grand action romance, a stubborn sense of honesty.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The real problem isn't with the actors, it's with 1) the source material, a highfalutin romance novel with a clever literary conceit, and 2) LaBute's clumsy, uncomfortable efforts to telescope Byatt's book into a workable movie.

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

The cold distance that LaBute brings to the material keeps the viewer at arms' length.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Possession is in the end an honorable, interesting failure. It falls far short of poetry, but it's not bad prose.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

For a film that depends so much on the interaction between words and passion -- and the drama of how each shapes the other -- the shortage of both leaves Possession looking like nothing more than an "Indiana Jones" in which card catalogs stand in for treasure maps, and footnotes for bullwhips.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Watching Possession is a movie experience not much deeper than you'd get on your couch watching Masterpiece Theater or Mystery! -- pleasant enough, but oh so soft.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It's unfortunate that none of the principal actors is able to convey the passion the characters are supposed to have for each other.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

The film is by no means a disaster. Possession is prettily performed, prettily put-together. Yet, for a story set so firmly in the center of a fire, LaBute and his players have suited themselves in some mighty flame-retardant threads.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

An intelligent literary mystery story that holds interest and is intermittently affecting, but it never soars.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie is intelligent yet lifeless; it's all wisps and abstractions.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Possession suffers from insufficient nastiness.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Purely literary stuff that's always the first to go whenever a book is adapted for the screen. Unfortunately, as this thin and entirely ill-conceived adaptation from director Neil LaBute demonstrates, that stuff happens to be the lifeblood of Byatt's wonderful book.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

"In the Company of Men," "Your Friends & Neighbors," and "The Shape of Things," at least held you. Possession piddles away as you're watching it.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

LaBute can't avoid a fatal mistake in the modern era: He's changed the male academic from a lower-class Brit to an American, a choice that upsets the novel's exquisite balance and shreds the fabric of the film, corrupting all of LaBute's good work and robbing it of the impact it would otherwise have.

Washington Post Eric Brace

What's supposed to be a deep examination of the transcendence of love and art and poetry turns into another shallow film about how repressed the British are.

Newsweek Jeff Giles

Neil LaBute’s Possession is bad, but not spectacularly bad, which is disappointing.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The problem with Possession isn't that it's filmed in a lackluster way, but that it shouldn't have been filmed at all. Byatt's novel is an adventure in language, telling its story through a kaleidoscopic array of Victorian-style poetry and prose, alongside gripping accounts of the characters' activities and escapades.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 14 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Pat C. gave it a 5:
Starts off kinda slow, fades out all together, then wraps things up neatly for the now-unconscious.

Michelle P. gave it a 3:
I'm not a fan of these slow-paced movies. Maybe I'd like the book, but the movie was just.....zzzzz

Matt H. gave it a 9:
This movie's success lies within the performances of its lead actors. Eckhart and Paltrow give memorable performances, but are dimmed by the fantastic resonance of Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle's masterful work. It's their powerful and elegantly portrayed relationship that helps us believe that the intensity of their love might affect the modern lovers as well. It's an excellent film that gives credence to the importance of the lives lived by those who have gone before us and the influence that they have on us.

Chad S. gave it a 6:
Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart are extremely winning as book people but somehow they grow less and less interesting as "Possession" progresses. Maybe it's not them. Perhaps LaBute should've brought Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" to the screen instead. That play has more sparring and less starry-eyeing between their two PhD-packin' literature buffs. And no scene in which Eckhart plays hard-to-get because he has relationship issues. The period-piece storyline is much more engaging, although a real poet might've been more interesting than a fictional one. In "Arcadia", the two scholars feud over the actions of Lord Byron. But despite its flaws, "Possession" is well- worth seeing because in addition to Neil LaBute being talented, we now know that "Nurse Betty" wasn't a temporary repreive from his predilection for his "men are bastards"-themed films. It's official. He's eclectic.

Allen T. C. gave it a 10:
A beautiful piece of Art: Wonderful performances ... Thank you, Labute.

Jessica gave it a 0:
By far, the worst movie I've seen all year. Half the audience walked out after the first half-hour. I want my $9.00 back!

Bernice J. gave it a 4:
The story is okey, however G.Paltrow needs to take speech classes on announciation and projecting her voice. You could barely understand her and then to top off her non-understandable words- she throws in an accent. Everyone was straining to hear. Have no idea what she said as a result lost most of the story as others did too. Thank you, bernicehelen.

Possession Focus Features

Possession
Focus Features