The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady (1996) is Jane Campion's adaptation of Henry James's novel — watch it online on iFILM. Nicole Kidman plays Isabel Archer, a sharp-minded young American who turns down a comfortable English marriage and, after inheriting a fortune from her ailing uncle, believes she has finally bought herself the freedom to choose her own life. She is wrong.

Her supposed friend Madame Merle, played by Barbara Hershey, has been maneuvering her from the start toward Gilbert Osmond — a cultivated, glacially controlling collector of art and people, played by John Malkovich. The cast also includes Christian Bale, Mary-Louise Parker, Viggo Mortensen, and John Gielgud. By the time Isabel understands the arrangement she has walked into, the walls are already in place.

Campion isn't particularly interested in period atmosphere as comfort. She treats the velvet-curtained rooms and manicured gardens as the machinery of confinement they actually were for women of that era — which makes the film harder and more honest than most literary adaptations of its kind. Stream The Portrait of a Lady (1996) online on iFILM.