The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James’s classic tale becomes as much Campion’s own, with a star-studded cast led by Nicole Kidman. A lavish period drama of innocence lost, told through a searing contemporary lens.
From its opening montage featuring images of contemporary womanhood, Campion’s follow-up to The Piano similarly defies expectations of the ‘period drama’, turning the heroine of Henry James’s 1881 novel into a classic Campion subject. Kidman plays Isabel Archer, a naive heiress who falls for the dashing Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich) only to find herself trapped in a loveless marriage and subject to the manipulations of Madame Serena Merle (an Oscar-nominated Barbara Hershey). With sumptuous cinematography and an extraordinary cast (Richard E. Grant, Mary-Louise Parker, Christian Bale, Viggo Mortensen, Shelley Winters and Shelley Duvall), this epic boldly defies genre conventions. 
- Program Strand
- Jane Campion Retrospective
- Year
- 1996
- Classification
- PG
- Country
- UK, USA
- Language
- In English
- Director
- Jane Campion
- Producer
- Monty Montgomery, Steve Golin
- Cast
- Nicole Kidman, Barbara Hershey, John Malkovich
- Screenwriter
- Laura Jones
- Cinematographer
- Stuart Dryburgh
- Editor
- Veronika Jenet
- Genre
- Cinephile, Literary & Adaptations, Women Directors, Focus on Women, Retrospective
- Company Credits
- Rights Holder, Print Source: Park Circus
