Henry & June

I debate a lot when reviewing for this site whether or not I should grade movies on the curve of just comparing them to other WLW movies or all movies. Likewise, I debate how much weight good representation holds in terms of a positive or negative review. This is all just a long way of saying that Henry & June was not a film made for lesbians. There’s some visual interest and talent but the overwhelmingly heterosexual tone of the film ensures that despite its positives, I’m not going to recommend the film.

Despite its title, Henry & June’s focus is the author Anaïs Nin. The film primarily focuses on her affair with Henry Miller and occasionally his wife in the 1930’s. Anaïs is married to a man called Hugo though she finds him uninspiring. Then, apparent ideal portrait of masculinity Henry Miller shows up. Anaïs’s relationship with Miller starts off intellectual, but platonic. It’s his wife June who initially has a closer relationship with Anaïs. But when June leaves, Anaïs and Henry’s relationship turns from mutual desire to an actual sexual relationship. Miller’s presence as both lover and contemporary inspires Anaïs’s writing and both Anaïs and Miller use June as a muse for women and eroticism in their stories.

Henry & June runs about two hours and sixteen minutes. This runtime is overwhelmingly straight. There’s at most 15 minutes of June hitting on Anaïs and then they share a kiss 45 minutes into the film before June leaves. June doesn’t come back until the last 20 minutes. In that last 20 minutes, we get one sort of love scene between the two women but mostly just jealous melodrama about Anaïs and Henry’s relationship. There’s also one scene where Anaïs and her husband pay two female prostitutes to have sex in front of them. This is the sum total of WLW content in this over two hour movie about a sexually fluid author. I’m not pleased.

In its place, we have Anaïs’s male lovers as focus. And they’re awful. Henry Miller is this really prototypical masculine guy. Some of their love scenes have an edge of non-consent as he likes to physically manhandle her. I’m obviously not the audience but even in this sub category of man, I don’t understand the appeal. After their first meeting, Anaïs journals about his virility and urgency. None of that comes through from this guy. There’s also Nin’s husband, who sucks. I don’t really know what the movie wants me to think about him. Anaïs certainly goes back and forth on if she likes him. There’s one scene where he’s in a mask and he corners and has forcible sex with Anaïs while she protests and fights him off before giving in and enjoying it. Then he reveals he’s her husband so that’s apparently fine, I guess.

This movie tries to be erotic but really misses the mark. As long as the movie is, there’s no lingering moments of eroticism, no languid moments of desire. The movie seems to be under the impression that it’s edgy because sometimes we see four or five pairs of breasts in a scene but the filming often feels clinical. There’s something dispassionate in the filming of Henry & June which is pretty bananas given its subject matter. This movie needed to be twice as horny and half as long.

Yet despite director Phillip Kaufman’s failure to make the film particularly erotic, his focus also didn’t seem to be on performances. Nobody’s a particularly good actor in this. Maria de Medeiros gives the strongest performance as Anaïs but it’s nothing special. Everyone else is pretty bad. This is despite the film having 3 Oscar nominees in the cast; Uma Thurman, Richard E. Grant and, regrettably, Kevin Spacey. Grant is surprisingly awful in this. I don’t know what his instructions were as a performer but he comes across as stilted. Thurman is likewise weak. More focus was put on her looking right than actually being able to perform what could have been a meaty supporting role if more care was taken.

There are positive visual and technical elements at least. The costume design, hair and makeup and production design are stellar. The film also received and Oscar nomination for cinematography. So visually at least, it’s an okay movie. But Jupiter Ascending is also a visually pleasing movie and nobody’s saying that’s enough to make up for the story. Such is the case here. I love a good costume design and I respect all the workers who put in the time to bring this 1930s bohemian mood to life. However, that doesn’t cover the fact that the story and characters inhabiting this world are weak.

Despite some visual beauty, Henry & June is not a success. It’s poorly acted, has little insight into its characters and is neither queer nor horny enough given who its lead character is. The film’s depiction of eroticism is almost laughably quaint 20 years on. Sure, some of this is the fact that I’m jaded and grew up on HBO. But mostly it’s that Kaufman thinks that some nudity and the occasional sex scene with questionable consent is enough to cultivate an air of eroticism like what is present in Anaïs Nin’s writing. It categorically is not.

Overall rating: 4.8/10

Other WLW films in similar genres