Uma Thurman: Henry June - Movie

Henry June
Cast :	Fred Ward, Uma Thurman
Director :	Philip Kaufman
Studio :	Universal Studios
Format :	Color, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Widescreen
Released Date :	October 05, 1990
DVD Released Date :	February 23, 1999
Language :	English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled)
Audience Rating :	NC-17
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Customer Reviews

Rating
Date	July 08, 2005
Summary	Ok for the first viewing
Content	I was highly disappointed with this movie. The first time I watched it, I'll admit, I did enjoy it. But upon viewing it again and again, it came to my attention how wrong things were portrayed, how facts were turned around or even left out, most likely to make the story more interesting for us 'viewers'. Uma Thurman as June was a horrible call. She looks nothing like June, and she left a very bad taste and cold feeling in me watching her in this. Fred Ward, however, as Henry Miller, was as near, physically, one can get to Miller and Maria de Medeiros was a perfect Anais Nin, physically and personality wise. I would recommend viewing this if you don't care about details and want an introduction to the life of Henry Miller or Anais Nin, but anything more than that, I'm afraid, it fails.

Rating
Date	June 11, 2005
Summary	art as pornography or vice versa?
Content	This is a film, based on lots of written materials from both Anais Nin and Henry Miller, about an extraordinary period in Paris of the 1930s. I love that city, and the film evokes it in all its unique beauty and ferment, with the fascist revolution of Germany in the background. For over 30 years, I have studied the Paris of that time, and this film is one of the best on it. The theme of the film is Nin's erotic awakening, when as a meek though ambitious woman - kept by an unusually tolerant banker husband who is the only charicature in the film - she seeks lovers, both men and women. She is portrayed exceptionally well by de Medeiros, as a kind of proto-feminist and budding writer. The people she is drawn to are an unconventional couple, Miller and his bi-sexual wife, who are concerned with art and seeking the spark they once felt in eachother with others. While this is a common dilemma, the fact that they are artists in an amazing time makes their journey unique and stunningly vivid. Things are more or less from the point of view of Nin, whose diaries are the principal source, with a dash of Miller thrown in. We watch her emerge from private pain and frustration with her dull, though loyal husband, seeking to forge a way for herself to ecstacy and totality. It is a grand experiment that, I must say, us mortals in conventional relationships will never understand, except perhaps in fantasy. She has the audacity to really do it, to live it. (Or so she syas.) Nin is one of the first "moderns" whose lives are their work of art, whose actions and choices surpass their artistic output as a way of entering our imaginations. You can view them in many different ways: pioneers, simple egoists, or superior beings. What is great about them is how much they reflect of the history of our times, when so many certainties were breaking down as new (non-christian) ideologies were emerging. That makes this an exceptional film. Uma Thurman is also brilliant as Miller's troubled wife. She has this indefinable air about her, a femme fatale who is also pathetic and vulnerable. While she hangs in the background, in many ways she is the character that controls the actions of the others, laughing at them while also suffering. This may be her greatest performance. She rules the climactic moment of the film. While I fall into the camp that views these people as marginal narcissists and mediocre artists, this film is a wonderful snapshot in time. No matter who you are, you will react to it differently, in your own way and with your own vocabulary. That makes this a true work of art. It stimulates and provokes, but cannot be buttonholed. Warmly recommended.

Rating
Date	May 31, 2005
Summary	Idiots!!!
Content	I just got done reading a review for this that wrote that Anais Nin was spoilt and immature and lacked feelings. All she ever did was give!! I love Henry Miller's writing to death but any self-repsecting artist will tell you that Henry lacked emotion and had an insatiable lust for whores. Henry was a wonderfull author, yes, but the reason why his writing so wonderfull was because he gave the part of his "self" that he could not act out in reality to his work. Because henry was a man of pieces. The little emotion and love and happiness he did have was reserved for the books he wrote and the ones closest to him. The reason why this movie is told from Anais Nin's point of view is because she's the one who gave personal insight into Henry and June through her journals in the first place... Don't listen to the idiot who wrote the last review about how Henry had passion and emotion. They don't understand art and obviously know nothing of Anais Nin because of they didn't know why the movie was from her perspective. This movie is more or less correct but what I wrote above is just a rant about what really happened. That damned person who wrote that review probablly only read Henry Miller and Anais Nin in college where they made him/her read it and he/she probablly didn't undertsand half of it.

Rating
Date	May 15, 2005
Summary	Henry and June and AnaÃ¯s
Content	June is Henry's wife - that's Henry Miller, the once-controversial author. AnaÃ¯s Nin is also married, to a man who loves her passionately and romantically. Miller is a man of huge and lusty appetites, and Nin has decided to explore her own capacities for physical affection. This story describes encounters between them, encounters that that turned hotly passionate and seemed to fuel both writers' careers. This isn't always easy on the others around them. Nin manages to keep her husband sweetly oblivious to her affair with Miller. Miller lacks her natural discretion, though. An unstable triangle forms between Henry, June, and AnaÃ¯s. Elegantly filmed sequences show AnaÃ¯s' making love to each (though never together). Perhaps Nin sought out the full range of experience with men and women, or perhaps her involvement with Miller demanded an involvement with his wife, as well. Or maybe, as June said, Nin had a writer's uncontrollable appetite for material. I'm not wholly sure what to make of Nin, as portrayed here. The actress in her role is petite, round-faced, and big-eyed, and makes me think of Nin's contemporary Betty Boop. She's almost childlike in many ways, and more often in the led position than the leading one in her sexual encounters. Uma Thurman's brassy chick from the Bronx (June) is generally good, though the faux Bronx accent didn't always succeed. The sparks struck between Thurman and Nin (Maria de Medeiros) were good, though, both in passion and in anger. It's a generally enjoyable movie, with warm, sometimes torrid physicality. I'm not sure how much I really learned about Miller or Nin, but I'm not sure that really matters. //wiredweird

Rating
Date	May 01, 2005
Summary	Deserves a worst director's award!
Content	I read about this movie on Amazon first and decided to rent it, thinking a romance happened in Paris, in the 1930s, can't be bad. What a disappointment it turned out to be. Kevin Spacey has a small and insignificant part. But Spacey fans should definitely avoid this one. Uma Thurman is one of the female leads but this must be an insult in her career too.

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