Okay, I didn't write that. Virginia Woolf did. Late one lovelorn evening, accompanied by lamplight and her own bleeding heart, Virginia sat down to tell Vita Sackville-West exactly what it was that she couldn't possibly say to her. Frustrating, I know; anyone who has ever picked up the volume of correspondence between the two lovers understands the madness that surely will befall a reader who exists with a carrot perpetually held in front of them. The two women write endlessly of their passion, of their confusion, of their plans, their longing, their distance. The one thing you don't get to witness is their closeness. They're just letters, after all, and the build-up you witness page after page never comes to fruition in the text because the women live it-they come together to write, to make love, to exist in a momentary overlap, only to bring us back to the vagueness of waiting until next time.
Imagine my joy, then, when I learned of "Possession." Though largely driven by the secret love letters of two Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christobel La Motte, the glorious abilities of Hollywood afford us with the pleasure of seeing how things turned out beyond the written evidence. As if that weren't exciting enough, the film provides us with a parallel romance in the modern world as well. Gwyneth Paltrow once again pretends to be British as the icy and beautiful Professor (predictably of 'gender studies') Maude Bailey. Aaron Eckhart plays opposite Paltrow as the gruffly sensitive Roland Michell, an American on a research fellowship in London. One fateful afternoon, Michell is researching Ash and stumbles upon some original letters heretofore buried by the passing of time and untouched, yellowing pages. As it turns out, the letters are from Ash to La Motte, the poet that Paltrow's character is researching. The two throw themselves into unearthing the romance between the two poets and, in the process, of course, unearth a particularly interesting romance between themselves.
Now, I'm not particularly a romance fan, per se. But overall, I'd have to say that I really appreciated this film. Not only did I feel like I was recovering from some jilted feelings about the exclusive nature of letters (I got to see the results, after all), but I couldn't get over the feeling that the whole idea was just, well, cute. And that, for once, was a good thing. I sympathized with the researchers-I wanted Bailey and Michell to find something of their own, to stop spending all of their time bogged down by books, analysis and literary genius. It was time for some good old fashioned feeling, and this cross-century double-date was chock full of that.
Some of the thematic and cinematic parallels between the two couples were somewhat irritating, I will admit. It was a little much to have the camera pan from Bailey to La Motte and vice versa, though it wasn't too incredibly unwarranted. One had to complement and enrich the other, after all. My favorite thing about the parallels, though, was that there was a happy ending where there wasn't necessarily one before. We all know that Virginia Woolf drowned herself and Vita Sackville-West really preferred men anyway, just as we end up knowing that La Motte and Ash were doomed by circumstance and all those other stupid things that marr love affairs no matter what the time period. However, the third time's a charm, you could say-and we're blessed with the opportunity to cheer on Bailey and Eckhart in their awkward, intimate game of cards.