Possession (2002)

Old movie, short entry: Somewhere between a cold that I can't get rid of, end-of-year reports, unsolved family issues and other house issues, which again confirmed that December 25th is a backup day for unfinished business and to not expect more because it's not helpful for my morale, I said it might still be a good idea to search for a movie that's more in tone with the period. That didn't come so well either... "Possession" is an old romance, quite corny, that fooled me by being additionally classified as "mystery" by IMDb. We have a couple formed by an American assistant in a literature department somewhere in UK (Aaron Eckhart) and a doctor in another literature department also in UK (Gwyneth Palthrow) who team up for investigating a romantic affair kept secret by a (fictitious) British 19th century poet, whose work apparently dedicated to his wife had actually another target... (or that's left for you to understand by the ending of the movie). All this story has an academic touch of Indiana Jones in a literary version = all sorts of cryptic verse taking us through various deserted mansions, isolated cascades, up to digging up a grave. Besides that we also have a rival group hunting for the same "academic treasure", obviously for mean personal benefits = fame & glory for the century's literary discovery (it's not totally clear what's the difference in case of the first group for this part..., but well, we needed something to make the action slightly more dynamic). Besides the present side, for who's into pure romance we have the 18th century story narrated through flashbacks. With all the risk of seeming insensitive, this whole story is so dull that the main quality it has is to act as a sleeping pill... reason why it actually took 3 attempts to finish the movie. To conclude, maybe the summary and the idea itself might look ok, but the script is much much worse... Enough said.

Rating: 2 out of 5