Henry & June

With Henry & June, [Kaufman] has had the courage to look at the many unconventional faces of love with grace and sympathy. It is a daring and major accomplishment by one of our foremost film artists. [05 Oct 1990, p.E1]

Henry & June is a difficult, uncompromising work whose best qualities are not likely to be appreciated by all filmgoers. But it is, quite simply, the most overwhelming film about ultimate freedom to reach us in years. [19 Oct 1990, p.12]

Henry and June may be as sexually explicit as any major Hollywood production since the early '70s, but it is also intelligent, well-acted and expertly crafted. [05 Oct 1990]

A beautiful movie, probably more erotic than any mainstream film ever made and yet never remotely pornographic, at other times hilariously funny. [05 Oct 1990, p.3F]

Some will think this film silly; my guess is that Kaufman has himself an upscale cult movie, a la Women in Love or his own Unbearable Lightness. [05 Oct 1990, p.4D]

An odd, slightly distanced tone seeps into the movie, almost as if the director were working in a foreign language. Only this keeps Henry & June from being a great movie. But in no way does it hold it back from being a beautiful, captivating and spectacularly uninhibited one. Read full review

Henry & June, a portrait of two pioneers in prose, accomplishes its own kind of pioneering on screen and not merely because it's unapologetically erotic: it effortlessly pairs that oddest of all couples, sexual desire and cerebral activity. It is, as a friend commented in a phrase Nin and Miller would have loved, "an erection for the mind." [05 Oct 1990]

The film has a rich visual tone and a sparse narrative quality. [05 Oct 1990, p.E15]

It's wry and stylish and perfectly cast, and only occasionally does it fall into the trap of taking itself as seriously as its characters sometimes do. [05 Oct 1990, p.26]

Henry & June doesn't finally cohere, but there's something noble in its evocation of the erotic in all its pleasure and pathos. [22 Oct 1990, p.74]

In Henry & June, Kaufman, trying to deepen the erotic explorations of Unbearable Lightness, ends up with a triangle movie that’s watchable but also arty and rather stilted. Read full review

Ward has a mischievously good time. He makes this picture better than it deserves to be. Read full review

An old-fashioned literary biopic with all cliches intact and some pseudo-steamy grapplings to keep interest, if you must, up. Read full review

Henry and June is so gentle it almost floats away--but it’s a movie that can’t just be dismissed. It may be a failure but it’s a one-of-a-kind-failure. Read full review

Henry & June is a sumptuous film, more deeply shaded and richly appointed than Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. While it fails to capture the lovers' emotional evolution, it does project their individual concerns. [05 Oct 1990, p.6]

While visually lush and inviting, this insular, self-absorbed film is more a violation than a celebration of the lives of two of literatures foremost sensualists, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Little of Miller’s boisterous, anarchic spirit makes its way into this film. Nor is its superficial handling of Nin’s theme of a woman’s self-realization likely to satisfy her admirers. Read full review

Kaufman's account of the triangular affair between Henry Miller (Ward), his wife June (Thurman) and Anais Nin (Medeiros) in '30s Paris is certainly good to look at, edited like a dream, and about an hour too long. Intelligently scripted, particularly good on the pain in relationships, it doesn't shed much light on the literary commerce between the writers. Read full review

Kaufman tries to project a kind of professorial sobriety, hoping his film will seem classy and serious instead of raunchy. We think it could've used more raunch, and we're sure Henry Miller (whose favorite film was L'AGE D'OR) would have agreed. Read full review

In its depiction of Depression Paris and sexual candor, Henry & June succeeds. The central performances of Fred Ward, as the cynical, life-loving Miller, and Maria de Medeiros, as the beautiful, insatiable Anais, splendidly fulfill the director’s vision. Pic is less successful in gaining audience sympathy for these hedonists. Also, the character of June (Uma Thurman) is ill-defined. Read full review

Henry & June is a gorgeous film, one aimed at the intelligent and discriminating. As iconography, it's a stunner. But it would be better off as a silent. It's an example of talent and intelligence determined to do everything right, only to have almost everything come out wrong. [05 Oct 1990, p.53p]

Kaufman wants to be bold in his depiction of lovemaking, but he keeps copping out, cutting away from the deed to such time-worn metaphors as booming bongo drums, pots that boil over on stove tops and African dancers gyrating wildly. Were Kaufman's frankness ever to equal the "passion and honesty" he praises in Miller's work, the film would merit at least an NC-21, if not 41. [05 Oct 1990, p.I]

Directed by Philip Kaufman, who pays equal attention to the literary ideas and sexual preoccupations of the characters, but generates little new understanding of either. [05 Oct 1990, p.12]

One thing it's not, despite the several lesbian love scenes that earned the film its NC-17, nee X, is "steamy." Nor is it provocative or even, Kaufman's best intentions notwithstanding, particularly erotic. It's a handsome bore. [05 Oct 1990, p.G5]

The characters' sexual abandon is so complete that it robs the story of any shape. Read full review