A young writer tries to obtain romance letters a poet sent to his mistress.... (Full plot summary below)
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A young writer tries to obtain romance letters a poet sent to his mistress.
Leave your thoughts about The Aspern Papers.
| Washington PostMichael O'SullivanThe film is smart, literary, nuanced, slightly stagy — and pedigreed to within an inch of its life. It practically reeks of dusty, yellowed pages and engraved-leather bookbinding. |
| The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldThe Aspern Papers, brief as it is, needed more of a lightness of touch; if you weigh down melodrama too much, it dies. |
| RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyAlthough he’s playing a man of letters, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers swans around the film’s settings with a pout that suggests that he’s waiting for his cue to sing “Please allow me to introduce myself.” |
| Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLandais has made a version of Aspern that is too often uncertain and unconvincing despite the good work of his female stars. And when the actresses leave the screen and the film ventures into ill-advised flashback territory, things get shakier still. |
| San Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisThe movie is made even worse with embarrassing flashbacks, painful voiceover, and inane dream sequences. It’s like a Merchant-Ivory film – on Quaaludes. |
| The New YorkerAnthony LaneIt’s when Landais departs from the original, or has a bright idea for expanding on it, that the movie’s troubles begin. |
| Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghLandais certainly brought little cinematic verve to The Aspern Papers, telling the story largely in turgid literary voiceover lifted directly from the original source material. |
| The New York TimesManohla DargisToo bad that the best that can be said about the woeful movie version of the The Aspern Papers, based on the Henry James novella, is that it might send you running to the original. |
| The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForePassion is spoken of and clumsily envisioned in The Aspern Papers, but not a drop of it is felt. |
| Slant MagazineKeith WatsonThe words of Henry James have never sounded as leaden and preposterous as they do in Julien Landais’s The Aspern Papers. |
