Henry & June (1990)

Anaïs Nin (Maria de Medeiros) is a young woman in 1930s Paris whose husband is slowly defecting from art to working in a bank, leaving her very bored. When the then-unpublished Brooklyn writer Henry Miller (Fred Ward) enters her life, she embarks on a journey of seduction and sexual exploration that eventually leads from the writer to his wife, June (Uma Thurman), who finances her husband's life in Paris so he may praise her beauty in his writing. Unhappy with her husband's writing and her lovers' affair, June enters a jealous rage, forcing Henry into suffering-artist mode and Nin back to her husband. Despite having one of the more erotic scenes of the 1990s, between Nin and June, the film does not live up to its subject, largely due to a mediocre screenplay and flawed direction. The strength of the original material and Medeiros's decidedly unflawed performance, however, make it worth viewing. --James McGrath Amazon.com

Splendid Work of Art

Henry and June is the tale of colleagues who become lovers, yet remained married to others. This movie is sensual, sensational, stimulating, sexy, smart. It tells a story about how passion can overcome those who work together and admire their minds as well as their bodies. Aspects of infidelity as being not such a horrible sin, of love between women as natural, and of jealousy are treated realistically. There are plots and subplots intertwined. The characters are well developed. Also, the filmography is unusual and beautiful June 14, 2008

Women who believe playing heads games by being

mysterious in the belief that it makes them "creative" will like this film. As will those who don't (yet) see through Nin's phoniness.

When Nin was having an affair with Otto Rank, she took a trip to the US. As a going away gift, Rank gave her a dress. When she returned he noticed a hole in the dress, cut with scissors. She told him she'd spilled wine on it aboard ship. Actually, what she cut out was a semen stain.

It's easy to be "mysterious" if one is a serial liar.

Other than that, the autobiography, the descriptions of the others in Nin's life at that time (her then-husband being conveniently passive), are interesting a few times through. But Nin's narcissism, head-games, and deceits are quickly more than one can tolerate.

Two stars: one because the film is in color. The other because it has actors/acresses in it. I would have given it a third star because it had words in it, but those were written by Nin, so haven't any particular distinction or value as concerns imparting any substantial truths.
May 15, 2008

Interesting movie, regular edition

I purchased this because the R2 european edition doesn't have spanish subtitles. Both editions have regular-to-bad video and audio trasfers, what is quite disappointing because this movie's cinematography is lovely.

Seldom [wrongly] clasified as soft erotic, the movie itself is quite appealing, specially for those interested in Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller figures and artists life in Paris at late 20s. May 5, 2008

Promises the moon, delivers an eclipse.

Henry and June (Phillip Kaufman, 1990)

It seems I start every review of an NC-17 movie with great gusting sighs of frustration about how the NC-17 rating promises so much, and somehow fails to deliver every time. NC-17 should be a code for "literate porn", but in reality, it usually has more to do with a filmmaker refusing to cut three buttock thrusts (which David Lynch did to score an R for Wild at Heart) or one almost subliminal and entirely unerotic scene (which Darren Aronofsky refused to cut from Requiem for a Dream, preferring to release the film in all its NC-17 glory). Henry and June fits right in with the rest of them; it's exceptionally literate, but it's hardly porn. For the record, according to IMDB's trivia section, "The 2 to 3 second shot of Anais looking at an explicit illustrated postcard involving a Japanese woman and a squid was the cause of the NC-17 rating." Oh, the humanity. (Or the squidianity, I guess. It was nice to discover that tentacle porn did not originate with hentai!)

Loosely adapted from the diaries of Anais Nin, Henry and June tells the story (from Nin's POV, obviously) of the love triangle of Nin (the almost painfully beautiful Maria de Medeiros, recently of The Saddest Music in the World), Henry Miller (Fred Ward, whose career has encompassed everything from the sublime [Escape from Alcatraz] to the ridiculous [the Tremors movies]), and Miller's lovely, deeply self-destructive wife June (Uma Thurman, who needs no introduction). There's a lot of casual, if secretive, sex, and a great deal of sighing and hand-wringing, and Henry Miller attempting to write Tropic of Cancer, which Anais and her husband Hugo (Richard E. Grant, recently of Filth and Wisdom) grow to love, while June grows to despise it-- though whether Miller is truly distorting her, or whether she hates seeing so much of her true self on the paper we never find out (and is, in many ways, the movie's most absorbing question).

It's not a bad film by any means-- I don't think Kaufman, who has made surprisingly few films over the course of his long and distinguished career, is capable of making a bad film-- but it could certainly have been a better one. The movie's two-hour-plus running time could have been cut by at least half an hour without losing anything of substance (nor of titillation). There's a difference, when one is pacing, between "leisurely" and "pedestrian"; Bela Tarr, for example, makes agonizingly slow movies, but they're great. Henry and June is just plain slow. But within that slowness are stunning performances by just about everyone involved, including small roles from Kevin Spacey, early in his career, Gary Oldman, and Jean-Louis Bunuel (the son of the great director). I watched it in close proximity to Zalman King's painful Delta of Venus, and it's impossible not to compare the two; there's no way Henry and June doesn't come out on top. (Even the pacing is better; Delta of Venus is even more pedestrian.) Still, I can't stop thinking it would've been better if it had been consciously trying to catch the viewer's interest with something other than sex; all these great characters, and we never really get to spend enough quality time with them to really click. ** ½
April 29, 2008

Seemed Dated

The girls get sensual. The guys are props or toys. This one is for the girls. I'm surprised a big star, Uma Thurman, early in her career, no doubt, she really gets into it with little Maria de Medeiros. I found myself fast forwarding through the love scenes for three reasons: seen one vintage lingerie scene, seen them all, with the advent of accessible adult fare there's no reason for this stuff in mainstream art films, my own mature life is just as interesting and sensual. This is a problem for modern directors and writers. We've experienced it all, lived it since the 1960's, so what's so special about the activities of Bohemians in 1931?

To be fair, I liked Tropic of Cancer. I read it not too long ago. My only complaint, it seemed dated somehow.
March 4, 2008

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