Henry & June

BUY

General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - 1.33:1, not 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1990	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	130:33 minutes	Other Extras	Biographies - Cast and Crew Production Notes Web Links
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (62:47)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	2,4	Director	Philip Kaufman
Studio Distributor	Columbia TriStar	Starring	Fred Ward Uma Thurman Maria de Medeiros Richard E. Grant Kevin Spacey
Case	Brackley
RRP	$39.95	Music	Mark Adler

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s) German ( Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s)  French (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s) Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s) Polish (Dolby Digital 1.0, 96 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English French Portuguese Danish Finnish Czech Swedish Norwegian German Dutch	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    My apologies for getting that rather bluntly out in the open but I thought it important to make my views rather clear on this point. I do however concede that there are many who will disagree with me completely on this point and will find much to enjoy in this somewhat pretentious work. This is a rather languid affair that somewhat laboriously wends its way through a rather mildly interesting menage-a-quatre. Based upon the diaries of Anais Nin, which were for many years sequestered away from the public eye, this is broadly the true life story of the affair between the American writer Henry Miller (Fred Ward) and Anais Nin (Maria de Medeiros). For those no so literary-inclined, Miller was noted for the rather sexually explicit nature of his works and the book that is mentioned during the film, and that forms the framework around which the film is to some extent hung, is Tropic of Cancer, written in 1934 and for many years banned in many countries - it was not published in the United States until the 1960s for instance. Anais Nin was perhaps most noted for her Journals, based upon her diaries written between 1931 and 1974, which more or less document the sexual awakenings of a woman and her general journey of self discovery.

    The film broadly revolves around the sexual self discovery of Anais Nin and the impact upon that self discovery of her meeting Henry Miller, and how this impacted upon her relationship with her husband Hugh Guiler (Richard E. Grant) and Henry Miller's wife June (Uma Thurman). It s also a documentary of the sexual liberation of Paris during the early 1930s, a period dominated to some extent by the throwing off of the restrictive sexual shackles of the Nineteenth Century.

    From a performance point of view, there is little to complain about here, although I also find little to praise here either. Fred Ward unfortunately to me will always be remembered as Gus Grissom from The Right Stuff, and is less than compelling here as Henry Miller. Maria de Medeiros is suitably waif like as Anais Nin and is perhaps the most convincing of the lead performers here, which is more than I can say about Richard E. Grant: I am still trying to work out exactly what sort of person he was trying to characterize. Uma Thurman got stuck with something of the poor end of the deal here with the slightly eccentric role of June Miller, and plays little real role in the film other than being the object of Anais' desires: however, when she was present on screen she tended to be the focus, exuding a nice sexuality that is quite alluring in some respects. It would seem that Philip Kaufman was trying to achieve a certain style here to convey the story, but it really all went straight over my head and just left me bemused by what really seems more like an incoherent rambling. About the only thing positive that I have to say about the film is that it copped an Oscar nomination in 1991 for Best Cinematography.

    You should have gathered by now that I did not like the film, and found little to enjoy here at all. The blurb describes this as Philip Kaufman's "brilliant film", "a true adventure more erotic than any fantasy" and "an erotic masterpiece". I am still trying to work out what is so erotic about this film, and the rest borders on false advertising in my view.

Video

    The video transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    Overall, this is quite a dismal looking transfer: the overall definition is fairly mediocre and is anything but sharp. The transfer is itself quite dark and this does not aid the definition. Furthermore, there is a high degree of grain in the transfer, which at times makes the transfer look like a blown up picture of microbes moving around in a petri dish. Part of the problem here is that the director had a certain artistic style in mind, and this would appear to have been to catch the gritty, grimy nature of a big city in the 1930s. Whilst that may have been successful, the result does not look great on this decidedly second rate transfer. The overall transfer is not really clear either. Shadow detail was reasonable but I would have expected a little better in a film of this age.

    The general colour palette on offer here is quite muted, again the result of what would appear to be a deliberate choice by the director. Even when there was the opportunity for some nice, bright, vibrant colour - such as during the bicycle ride in the woods - the colours remain quite subdued. This results in almost undersaturation in skin tones for instance, that I find just a little less than believable. There is certainly no hint of oversaturation here. Once you adjust to the style however, the artistic choice does not really hamper the film at all.

    There were no MPEG artefacts noted in the transfer. Film-to-video artefacts mostly consisted of some noticeable and distracting aliasing throughout the film: at times it really was most off-putting - just check out the trombone at 41:37 as an example. Hampering the transfer too are some rather obvious black circles in the upper right corner of the transfer on a number of occasions: these are reel change markings I believe and are indicative of the fact that this transfer has been mastered from at least a third generation source, which may account for the overall lack of quality here. Film artefacts were quite prevalent during the transfer, at times quite noticeable and mildly distracting.

    The disc is an RSDL format disc, with the layer change coming at 62:47. Whilst this is not during a scene change, it is not too badly placed and it is during a still shot of a sheet of paper, and is barely noticeable and completely non-disruptive to the film.

Audio

    There are six soundtracks on this DVD: English, German, French and Italian soundtracks in Dolby Digital 2.0 (surround-encoded), Spanish in Dolby Digital 2.0 and Polish in Dolby Digital 1.0. The latter is actually a lot more akin to an interpreter giving an interpreted reading over the English soundtrack, so there is only the one voice throughout. I got a tad bored with the film to be blunt so indulged in rather extensive sampling of all of the soundtracks, as well as combinations with assorted subtitle options. Those samplings would indicate that the surround encoding is not exactly brilliant on any of the tracks.

    Dialogue was clear and generally easy to understand at all times.

    There were no audio sync problems during the film.

    What little original music there is in the film comes from Mark Adler, but really it is quite minor stuff. There really is little use of music in the film, and most of what is there is extracted from French sounding music from the era.

    Whilst the packaging suggests that there is surround encoding on the English, German, French and Italian soundtracks, what there is is quite minimal and not overly effective. However the film is rather dialogue heavy (apart from the extended sequences of silence) so the lack of real surround presence is barely noticed. The overall sound picture across all the soundtracks is quite front and centre, with the vocal track being just a little too present in the mix for my liking. Still, all soundtracks seem to be free of any distortion and are quite clear, although a bit more space in the mix would have been a bit of a benefit in general. Obviously the bass channel gets no work here at all. Overall, the soundtracks (excluding the rather excruciating Polish effort - really why bother with this sort of interpreting rubbish soundtrack?) are at best serviceable and nothing really much more.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer (2:10)

Biographies

Production Notes

Web Links

• 16x9 enhancement

• 16x9 enhancement

    A second rate video transfer.

    A serviceably good audio transfer.

    A poor collection of extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
7th May 2000