HENRY & JUNE
Directed by Philip Kaufman.
Starring Maria de Medeiros, Fred Ward, Uma Thurman, and Richard E. Grant.
At the Cheri and Harvard Square.
By JOANNA STONE
"I FEEL INNOCENT," pronounces the protagonist, Anais, time and again during the course of Henry and June. Indeed, in perhaps the most controversially erotic film of the decade, we find a protagonist who personifies innocence. However, this same protagonist is the incarnation of female sexuality. And here is where the paradox arises.
Lying naked next to her husband's best friend, fantasizing about her lover's wife, Anais maintains, even intensifies, her own innocence. For it is not her acts which dictate her state of innocence, it is instead her self-perception. Never during the course of Henry and June do we forget that we are seeing the decadent European society of the early 1930s -- around which the film is centered -- through the eyes of Anais.
Henry & June is based on the unexpurgated diaries of Anais Nin. Thus, the world we see in this film is the world as described by the diary entries of a young woman. The film skillfully maintains a diary-like quality to it, not only through constant reference to the diaries of Anais, but also through an unreal-world quality heightened through all mediums of the film. Indeed, the dialogue uttered can be thought of as that of writers -- overly eloquent, lacking spontaneity. And the events that occur throughout the film lack a certain credibility -- presumably dramatized through the perception of a writer.
When Anais first embarks on her affair with Henry Miller, it is behind a stage on which her oblivious husband plays the bongos. The fantastic quality of this unlikely scenario is heightened through the photography, a translucent red screen separating Anais from her husband, his shadowed image and a close up of his hands shows him playing the drums to a climax. One can imagine that this would be the scene as recalled by a romantic writer. Indeed, the quality of the photography appears picturesque throughout. Even the film's finale has a fairy-tale quality to it -- not until the end do we first become cognizant of sunlight -- consistent with Anais' imagination.
It is by no mistake that Marie de Medeiros, who plays Anais, is able to appear overtly wide-eyed through the film. Medeiros manages to portray the dichotomy of innocence and erotica with great deftness. It is Anais' role to tell us a story, it is Medeiros' role to hold the film, and she does so beautifully. The audience can sympathize with, envy, or abhor Anais, yet with Medeiros' strong performance one never loses interest in her.
Thus, the film Henry & June is not about the author Henry Miller and his wife June; it is about how Anais Nin perceived Henry and June, how she loved and sexually yearned for them, and how she viewed herself in relation to both of them. It is indeed a rendition of Anais' tribute to them.
Similar to his work with Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, director Phillip Kaufman does a superb job of taking a written work of art and transforming it to the screen. Through such a transformation, he does not lose any of the work's original point of view or original naive beauty.
Equal in greatness to the film's achievement of the visualization of the written records of one woman's sexual awakening, is the exceptional performance by Uma Thurman as Henry Miller's wife, June. So rare is it in today's cinema to witness a performance which lacks flaw. Yet, Thurman manages to produce just such flawless work. She is completely believable as the promiscuous, lower-class girl from Brooklyn (quite a change from her upper-class, 18th century virgin role in Dangerous Liaisons). If it is Medeiros who holds the audience, it is Thurman who steals the show.
The amount of quality and talent displayed in this film is far too expansive to list. All that can succinctly be said is that, like Kaufman's earlier work (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), Henry & June is a must-see.
Copyright 1990 by The Tech. All rights reserved.
This story was originally published on Friday, October 19, 1990.
Volume 110, Number 43
The story was printed on page 14.
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