The Aspern Papers (2018) User Reviews (21)

Ugh, that clunky dialogue!

[movieswithgreg · 6/10 · 20 August 2019]

This is a first-time director's outing, IIRC. As such, it's usually bound to be bare-bones budget and limited sets and resources. That means a lot of people talking, or, if euro, a lot of people looking. And then on top of it, this is about some obscure, mysterious poet and those who crave to know more about him.

Someone made a creative decision for the lead (probably the director-cowriter), ryhs-meyers, to speak as if he were speaking off the pages of henry james' novel dialogue, only more robotically. It was the worst decision in this project. It repeatedly distracts and pulls us out of the story because it offends the modern ear.

Otherwise, this is a series of sparse acting gems for fans of vanessa redgrave. Richardson and rhys meyers just support the script and redgrave.

On the plus side, if you're in the mood for a moody, quiet, costume-rich period piece set and shot in venice, where not a single car chase or gunshot is to be found, then this will do adequately. I gave it a six for that reason. You don't come away from this film any stupider than you started, and that gets me at least a five these days. If it's about literature and costume-set pieces, then that's one point in general.

A waste of Vanessa Redgrave's talent

[shine-14811 · 4/10 · 29 April 2019]

Had high expectations but few minutes through the film I knew, it's a waste of time in spite of Vanessa Redgrave in it. The lead male act is a disaster. I think he's trying so hard, he sounds and acts like a robot.

It had a good story

[Diedelmon · 5/10 · 19 May 2019]

The thing about this particular movie is that it had a good story. And it could've been a great movie just telling said story. But the movie decided to be artsy. And it was ruined for that. Then it got messy, dragged itself for ages in senseless scenes, and its greatest sin, wasted a solid performance for Vanessa Redgrave.

Yikes.

[korereviews · 2/10 · 2 March 2019]

I almost feel guilty reviewing this film, since presumably someone involved with it probably really cared about the project, but oh my god is it bad. Usually a period drama like this is reliably solid - the worst it can be is stodgy and a bit dull; but this one was a screaming dumpster fire from its bodice-ripping opening credits. It should, however, get an award for most criminal waste of Vanessa Redgrave. Joelly Richardson is also an excellent actress, and one can only imagine the two must have been rolling their eyes at each other on the set over the god-awful, scenery-chewing performance of Jonathan Rhys Meyers. It's Razzie-worthy, actually - maybe he'll get a nomination. And what the hell was going on with that accent? It was supposed to be American, but was so over-the-top nasally and shouty it was like his lines were being read by an air horn. Good god man, get a dialect coach. In short, this movie is unwatchable.

Avant-garde vs Just Strange - Hard To Tell

[mikeh-54044 · 2/10 · 15 July 2019]

I have old-fashioned ideas about movies. I want (1) a story that interests, (2) characters that engage me, and (3) good writing with wit. That said, I must say that this film is, simply, stilted and entirely dull. Why would anyone suffer themselves to endure the bewildering collection of disjointed dialogue. Misses, entirely the story-ideal of beginning, middle, and, end.

Ripped Up

[girvsjoint · 3/10 · 9 February 2020]

A remake of the far superior Robert Cummings, Susan Hayward movie 'The Lost Moment' only this time using the proper title from the book. Unfortunately, this one has none of the atmosphere or great acting of the original. All I can say is seek out the DVD of the original to see it done right, this one's not worth the paper it's written on!

Great student film

[anmepa93 · 1/10 · 4 June 2019]

Don't expect to hear from this wanna-be director again... He had a chance at his first film and he completely blew it!

Bad acting, bad costumes, bad makeup, cheesy flashbacks, cheesy voice over, mediocre cinematography... just don't do it. Don't watch this.

Awful...

[foxandthehounds · 2/10 · 15 August 2019]

Awful, just awful. Fashion - gorgeous. Set designs - spectacular. Story idea - intriguing. Movie - BORING. Jonathan R-M's acting - awful, just awful. Why is he shouting his lines? Ending - waste of time. 90 minutes of your life you will never get back.

Worth the watch

[mstaffordca · 7/10 · 19 January 2019]

Visually stunning and although it was a slow burn, it was worth it in the end. My only complaints and reason for less than10 stars is because the character development just wasn't there and John Reyes Meyer was terrible in this movie!! I'm normally a fan (somewhat) but in this film he acted as though he was filming his first movie out of drama school, absolutely terrible acting, the way he spoke drove me crazy! It was like he was reading lines he had just read for the first time 10 mins before! He had NO emotion or understanding of the meaning behind the words/lines. It really distracted and annoyed me throughout the film. Other than that it was fine. The 2 main female roles were AMAZING! Especially the elder lady.

ZZZZZ

[tamaradell2 · 1/10 · 21 July 2020]

Couldn't get past about 15 minutes. Very boring. John Reyes Meyer was absolutely TERRIBLE. It might have been a decent movie but way too slow.

don't believe the negative hype

[iitonya · 10/10 · 13 January 2019]

The truths of the message of the story far outweigh the negative reviews of production

Watch this for the music and the setting - Rhys Meyers is strange here

[phd_travel · 7/10 · 28 February 2019]

I liked this artistically done movie adaptation of the Henry James story. It's beautifully shot in Venitian palazzi and the music is so appropriately used especially the Liszt piano music and Wagner at the end.

The Aspern Papers is a short novel so there's not a lot of story in this movie. But what's there is a still affecting tale of a writer with an ulterior motive and the spinster who might be able to give him the dead poet's letters he wants.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers acts strangely here - stiff and unconvincing. He delivers his lines theatrically with a strange American accent that doesn't quite convince. Joely does a convincing job as a whithered spinster who blossoms. Vanessa Redgrave really knows how to act like an old person who is in her final chapter of life.

Worth a watch.

Execrable

[kniphofia · 2/10 · 7 January 2020]

I love Henry James and am always interested by film adaptations of his work but oh dear, this was embarrassingly bad. It does no justice to James's superb novella. A truly woeful performance by Rhys Meyers. And Morton Vint must be the silliest name in all film. Avoid at all costs.

Dreadful

[mabjsy · 13 November 2019]

Oh dear me, what a frightful mess. Really no or little story line with such wooden acting from the main protagonist it was painful to watch. Avoid.

Incorrect awful costuming.

[debgcd · 2/10 · 7 March 2020]

Part of the reason I love "costume dramas" or "period pieces" is the beautiful clothing and the style of the era. The costuming in The Aspern Papers is a weird patchwork of no specific eras. The woman who dresses like a man, along with her friends look like their clothing came from Alice in Wonderland or a colorful version of Steam Punk style. Miss Tina's dresses are more like a American prairie dress or a servant. Beyond that, it's pretty much a boring movie even for me, who loves almost any Austen, James or Wharton.

Boring

[Lollylovesmovies · 4/10 · 4 July 2022]

I was really expecting this to be a good movie. I mean look who is in it! And Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson do not disappoint. Ugh but Jonathan Rhys Meyers is not. He is expressionless throughout. How is he included on lists of Irelands best actors? But back to the movie, it's very boring. It's about a trio, who all but one are dead, that you never really find out anything about them. The story of them is all in flashes that don't tell much of anything except the like to have sex together. All 3 of them. Most of the movie is, at least 2 of the 3 main characters-and sometimes all 3, standing around talking. So yeah it's boring.

All that glosses is not glitter.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 8 April 2021]

While there have been many versions of Henry James' short story "The Aspern Papers", only the 1947 film "The Lost Moment" has had any type of impact, and unfortunately, this story version fails to live up to that. Like Robert Cummings in that version, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is dreadfully miscast. In fact, he is downright embarrassing, equivalent to Robert Redford in "Out of Africa", John Malkovich in "Dangerous Liasons" and Keanu Reeves in "Bram Stoker's Dracula". Unfortunately, he gets more screen time than Joey Richardson and Vanessa redgrave, so you are forced to endure him which at times is torture.

While on the surface Susan Hayward seemed wrong for the role of Tina, she was quite right in choices she made in her performance, and Joely Richardson is decent. She is not photographed in a flattering light which really works here because the character of Tina, the niece of the extremely old Julianna (Vanessa Redgrave), is supposed to be like the character of Catherine in James' even more famous story "Washington Square".

As for Redgrave, she does not appear to be anywhere near a 100 plus year old woman (seemingly jokingly said to be over 150), and at times, she seems to be emulating Katherine Hepburn and at other times the old chrone in "Snow White". She goes from demonic and seemingly evil in some scenes to sweet and extremely spiritual in others, and I had a difficult time grasping who this character was. At least with Agnes Moorehead, her footage was limited so you really only saw her as he extremely old lady with some very deep dark secrets.

There are other elements that are confusing as well. For some reason, there appears to be a bisexual liaison between Meyers, Richardson and a very handsome man who really serves no purpose. As the film is only 90 minutes, had they give some detail to that, it might have been more believable.

The film certainly is gorgeous to look at, and the classical music is generously played throughout, but emotionally, this is as empty as Juliana and Tina's lives, and even if I had not known what the letters regarded, I wouldn't have cared to stick around to find out. Perhaps some classic novelettes just can't be film successfully or would require someone with an artistic understanding of the writer's intentions, but from what I've seen, "The Aspern Papers" should be just left alone.

Low-Score Reviews Miss the Point

[hilaryjrp · 8/10 · 16 March 2020]

If Henry James (he wrote the short novel "The Aspern Papers") strikes you as a psychotic who somehow got lucky and achieved fame, this film deserves your attention. It takes his compulsive idolatry of social station and cancels out much, but not all, the 1%'r porn *all* hat-dramas boil down to. And for this achievement, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' much-maligned performance is maybe 99% responsible.

Rhys-Meyers' "Morton Vint" is totally misunderstood by the majority of reviews here on IMDB. Rhys-Meyers makes his character--who is unnamed in James' novella--over-the-top repulsive from the opening voice-overs to the final fade-out. If you ask yourself, What is this film about? It's, first, about a trashy, low IQ American in pursuit of Percy Bysshe Shelley's letters ("Aspern" is the fictionalized name). To get his hands on them, he's willing to seduce and break the heart of the highly intelligent, refined, aging caregiver (Joely Richardson) of Shelley's elderly mistress (Vanessa Redgrave). Long-secluded from the world in Venice, Redgrave is as venal as Vint. It's regrettable that the film didn't make this as clear as it could have, although Redgrave's acting is as usual magnificent and does what it can with the script and direction. From a certain perspective, "Tina" (Richardson) is the victim of both Redgrave's unwarranted fame as a "great man's" mistress and Vint's unwarranted power as a dissolute American with too much money.

I never lost interest in this film despite Rhys-Meyer's take on the (*not*) hero role. That Richardson's Tina falls for this self-promoter despite the incredible fortress pedigree and brains give her is a testimony to how excellent a seducer Vint is. Substitute Alec D'Urberville. Substitute Steerforth. Substitute any seducer from Victorian fiction for Vint, and you see what Rhys-Meyers must have been aiming for. He's loud, crude, stupid--but persistent. And his persistence pays off.

Joely Richardson is magnetic in her role. Vanessa Redgrave and the eponymous letters are MacGuffins in what is really a battle of wills between only two people--Richardson and Rhys-Meyers. Richardson represents intelligence, grace, and wisdom; Rhys-Meyers does a great job at venality, brute force, and unremarkable shrewdness. "The Aspern Papers" is a revenge-drama of sorts. A woman as much of a "fortress" (Rhys-Meyers calls both Tina and Redgrave that) in danger of humiliating herself for an opportunist saves herself and achieves true freedom, not the spurious kind a "free-spirit" (Redgrave) who just liked to bed a lot of men achieved so long ago--so long ago that in adulthood and old age, her life has been a never-ending prayer for death.

Richardson's physical appearance changes subtly but consistently from her first appearance to her last. The walls she and Redgrave keep in place to protect her from the world also tumble. The "Aspern" letters ironically snatch true love from the flames--an aging woman's love of self from the desperation she had fallen into, but not before she realizes that a man whose sole lust has always been for an object will necessarily be subhuman.

Beautifully Done!

[cj-639-175143 · 10/10 · 14 January 2019]

Was taken in by the convincing and excellent performances of all three leads, from start to finish. I think what I loved most was that I felt inside the personal story throughout, filming was perfect!

What's the point of the story

[Gordon-11 · 17 August 2019]

This film tells the story of a young man who goes to extreme lengths to get his hands on some letters that are rumoured to exists.

The film has a thin story, and hence nothing much happens. The ending doesn't make much sense, because he could have what he wanted but he blew it. And then, viewers are left to wonder what the whole point is with the story.

a different type of film

[gordie02 · 8/10 · 6 May 2021]

Despite the negative comments, I really liked this film. It wasn't a brilliant story but the acting and the scenery more than made up for this. I really liked the male actor even though I hadn't seen him before. Nice to see a movie these days that isn't MA15+........!!