Possession
USA Films | Release Date: August 16, 2002 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
18
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
SlateDavid Edelstein
A wee, breezy thing with painterly cinematography (by Jean Yves Escoffier) and with actors who are mostly fun to watch. It sails by in 103 minutes and the clunky stuff isn't painful, which makes a change from LaBute's usual grueling studies in human callousness and depravity. Read full review
60
VarietyTodd McCarthy
LaBute has had middling success at best, having come up with a passably engaging time-jumping romantic melodrama that at least grapples seriously with one of the novel's most potent themes. Read full review
60
Film ThreatMichael Dequina
Ultimately comes off as so restrained as to be detached and almost as chilly as LaBute's darker films -- not exactly what one would want from a story about a love so strong that it echoes through the ages. Read full review
60
TimeRichard Corliss
When Possession finds its true home, lodging in the convulsive certitude of Victorian romance, it does indeed catch fire -- and warms any viewer in the mood for love. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The film wants to be "The English Patient" but doesn't have the elements that made that film a classic: sensitivity, perfect casting, a unique visual style and, underlying its grand action romance, a stubborn sense of honesty. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
The film is by no means a disaster. Possession is prettily performed, prettily put-together. Yet, for a story set so firmly in the center of a fire, LaBute and his players have suited themselves in some mighty flame-retardant threads. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
An intelligent literary mystery story that holds interest and is intermittently affecting, but it never soars. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The movie is intelligent yet lifeless; it's all wisps and abstractions. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
It's unfortunate that none of the principal actors is able to convey the passion the characters are supposed to have for each other.
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
The real problem isn't with the actors, it's with 1) the source material, a highfalutin romance novel with a clever literary conceit, and 2) LaBute's clumsy, uncomfortable efforts to telescope Byatt's book into a workable movie. Read full review
50
New Times (L.A.)Andy Klein
The cold distance that LaBute brings to the material keeps the viewer at arms' length.
50
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Possession is in the end an honorable, interesting failure. It falls far short of poetry, but it's not bad prose. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
For a film that depends so much on the interaction between words and passion -- and the drama of how each shapes the other -- the shortage of both leaves Possession looking like nothing more than an "Indiana Jones" in which card catalogs stand in for treasure maps, and footnotes for bullwhips. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Watching Possession is a movie experience not much deeper than you'd get on your couch watching Masterpiece Theater or Mystery! -- pleasant enough, but oh so soft.
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Possession suffers from insufficient nastiness. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
"In the Company of Men," "Your Friends & Neighbors," and "The Shape of Things," at least held you. Possession piddles away as you're watching it. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
LaBute can't avoid a fatal mistake in the modern era: He's changed the male academic from a lower-class Brit to an American, a choice that upsets the novel's exquisite balance and shreds the fabric of the film, corrupting all of LaBute's good work and robbing it of the impact it would otherwise have. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Purely literary stuff that's always the first to go whenever a book is adapted for the screen. Unfortunately, as this thin and entirely ill-conceived adaptation from director Neil LaBute demonstrates, that stuff happens to be the lifeblood of Byatt's wonderful book. Read full review
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