American Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman, EYES WIDE SHUT) has come to England as a guest of her late mother's sister Mrs. Touchett (Shelley Winters, A PLACE IN THE SUN) after her father's death. She bewilders her aunt and uncle (John Gielgud, GANDHI) by refusing an offer of marriage from Lord Warburton (Richard E. Grant, HENRY & JUNE) and her American journalist friend Henrietta (Mary-Louise Parker, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES) by refusing the proposal of suitor Casper Goodwood (Viggo Mortensen, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE); but Isabel sees marriage as separating herself from "the usual chances and dangers, from what most people know and suffer" and her sick cousin Ralph (Martin Donovan, NADJA) convinces his dying father to provide for Isabel to meet the requirements of her imagination. Isabel's "handsome fortune" makes her useful to fellow ex-patriot Madame Merle (Barbara Hershey, INSIDIOUS) who arranges for her to cross paths with rakish Gilbert Osmand (John Malkovich, THE SHELTERING SKY) during a trip to Florence. Osmand seduces Isabel - all of the film's eroticism occurs on a mental plane - weds her, and soon proves to be cruel and unfeeling. Isabel sees a chance for happiness for her stepdaughter Pansy (Valentina Cervi, ARTEMISIA) with penniless art collector Edward Rosier (Christian Bale, AMERICAN PSYCHO), but Osmand would rather she marry Lord Warburton (who has come to Italy to be near Isabel). Casper Goodwood has accompanied Ralph, whose condition has worsened, to Italy in order to convince Isabel to leave Osmand, but Isabel seems determined to live with her choices; but then, she discovers the depths of Osmand's and Madame Merle's manipulation.

Director Jane Campion's follow-up to THE PIANO was never going to be a great romance regardless of the source material (in his book on Campion, Alistair Fox said that the director had become disillusioned with romance in her personal life after the film and felt that she had done a "con job" on herself and others by "no more than a wish-fulfillment fantasy that was likely to have 'fucked up heaps of women' " by generating false expectations), and Henry James' source novel is not a romance; but did it have to be such an overall dreary and hopeless experience? Kidman's glum Isabel wanders around the entirety of the film with very little of a spirit for Osmand to break, with her stubborn determination to live with her choices - albeit in picturesque surroundings - seeming merely masochistic (and not in an entertaining way). Despite Hershey's multi-faceted Oscar-nominated turn, the depiction of her intrigues with Malkovich's Osmand feel very sub-DANGEROUS LIAISONS (with Malkovich playing virtually the same character, or at least the same mannerisms and inflections). Much of the impressive supporting cast is underused, but Gielgud, Donovan, Cervi, and Mortensen all get good moments (as well as Shelly Duvall as Osmand's dotty sister who has a rare moment of clarity with Isabel late in the film) while Winters is interesting in a period setting and Grant is bland when he tones down his acting style (he might have been more entertaining as Osmand). The film has improved somewhat with age - especially once one no longer expects another THE PIANO - and the once-laughable modern prologue (the soundtrack cue for the sequence is titled "My Life Before Me") is now one of the more interesting sequences (especially when one pays attention to the opening dialogue about the expectation of love as finding the "clearest mirror, the most loyal mirror"). Janet Patterson's costumes and production design, the cinematography of Stuart Dryburch (whose canted camera angles on some of the location exteriors were not so much a stylistic touch as a way of keeping modern details out of the shots), and Wojciech Kilar's (BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA) score are the film's strongest technical aspects.