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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 22771
Released: February 23, 1999 |
| Our Price: $27.80 |
| Used Price: $18.25 |
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MPAA Rating: NC-17
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Writer henry miller wife june and writer anais nin get kinky in 1930s paris. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 06/01/2004 Starring: Fred Ward Richard E. Grant Run time: 136 minutes Rating: Nc17 Director: Philip Kaufman
Description of Henry & June:
Anaïs Nin (Maria de Medeiros) is a young woman in 1930s Paris whose husband is slowly defecting from art to working in a bank, leaving her very bored. When the then-unpublished Brooklyn writer Henry Miller (Fred Ward) enters her life, she embarks on a journey of seduction and sexual exploration that eventually leads from the writer to his wife, June (Uma Thurman), who finances her husband's life in Paris so he may praise her beauty in his writing. Unhappy with her husband's writing and her lovers' affair, June enters a jealous rage, forcing Henry into suffering-artist mode and Nin back to her husband. Despite having one of the more erotic scenes of the 1990s, between Nin and June, the film does not live up to its subject, largely due to a mediocre screenplay and flawed direction. The strength of the original material and Medeiros's decidedly unflawed performance, however, make it worth viewing. --James McGrath
Henry & June Reviews:
A TRULY GREAT PERFORMANCE: UMA THURMON 
2009-11-11 - I don't intend to burden either of us with my ideas about Anias Nin or Henry Miller's art and methods, or their lives together, or their careeers. I went through my Sex-As-Personal-Liberation phase several decades ago, read their work, and my opinion of their efforts, in particular, both carnal and literary, are not enthusiastic. However, this film is a good one in that it is very nearly a "You Are There" recreation of Paris Between the Two Wars, and that in itself is worthwhile. Lots of time-specific nuggets of the real stuff, including snatches of "J'ai deux amours" in the earliest recorded version, with Jo Baker's unmistakable voice, street songs and carnival behavior, as well as little montage-like glimpses of Man Ray and his photographs. The exteriors of buildings, streets and courtyards of The Quarter are shown (not much changed even now) as well as the cramped, medieval interiors; but not a glimpse of the terrifying interior plumbing. For that you'll have to see Bill Murray's THE RAZOR'S EDGE, another great literary/historical recreation, though fictional.
But as good an historical recreatin of an eara as this movie is, with an exceptionally interesting actress Maria di Madiernos playing Anias Nin, and even our Kevin Spacey somewhere in the mix, nothing is evenly remotely as interesting as Uma Thurman's incredible tour de force as June, Miller's ex-taxi-dance hall wife and emotional and financial support during the lean years of his early career. As an actress on film, Thurman is always at least interesting to look at, for as Merle Streep said of her, "She is six foot tall, extremely beautiful and supremely talented." She is so secure in her sexuality, she is comfortable in homosexual and heterosexual roles. She is alternately graceful and powerful, as needed, whenever and however called for, and can summon up emotional power in whatever amount and whichever degree as may be required. We can take that for granted whenever we pay to look at one of her films. Here, in HENRY AND JUNE however, she demonstrates something I was completely unprepared for; her vocal abilities and in particular, her use of diction. Understand; HENRY AND JUNE is filmed in English, with only tiny snippets of French, as needed. What struck or didn't strike me, at first, is that Uma plays her role speaking in the flat, uninflected Brooklynese of the original woman throughout, without the tiniest lapse. (I mistook it for bad acting, or laziness.) But watching and listening more carefully, it came to me that in order to catch the poignance of Clara Bow's performances, I had to imagine Clara's own Brooklyn, working-class voice. Uma played June as sounding, and therefore being, or appearing, utterly COMMON. Utterly American. That is the key to her sexual appeal, and it is the key to Nin's fascination with her. Nin's view of her, of Henry and their literary efforts, is an aristocrat's view, and her erotic interest in June, is tied to her condesention. (Nin's Diary is all about slumming.) June is the new, independent and unencumbered woman, with her own erotic and emotional destiny, and Nin wants to become that woman.
The urgency of sex in the face of doom: This tiny aspect of the story characterizes most of it (most of Henry and Anias' copulative drama) as well as most of the turmoil of the age, in Europe. It is no secret that Orwell, working in the same Parisian neighborhood, was writing exactly contemporaneously and that Nin, Miller and Orwell were primarily self-obsessed diarists. Proust was alive and working too, as well as Gide, yet another diarist. Their Paris was exactly what you'd expect in a culture on the verge of suicide, in which more than half the male population of the leading European nations died on the battlefields of WW I. Naturally the brothels were filled with poor, lonely young women with no possible way of making a living or of making family. With European social presumptions about personal behavior in ruins, unsecure men and women fornicated in the streets, or wherever impulse found them. And the "American Girl" of the Cinema, who turns up as a character in Satie's ballet PARADE, became a kind of an erotic archtype. Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks and others, typified a kind of "cheap" new and easily available sensuality that seemed to be inevitable; something akin to Chanel's #5, the first popular synthetic female essence, or her inimitable, all-purpose "Little Black Dress" which was her version of Henry Ford's Model T. Somehow, Thurmon apparently managed to absorb everything the characters and their circumstances offered, and to embody it on screen, and miraculously she is able to transform and then display it as the original character might have done, with seeming effortlessness.
This may not be the performance of her lifetime, but for students of film, this may be the performance of our lifetime. Quelle artiste!
Betty Boop meets the Big Bad Wolf 
2009-10-15 - Forgive me if my title shows a lack of respect for this film. It is intended. I had high expections, due to the reputations of Anais Nin and Henry Miller, but these were not met by this movie. I love some of Kauffman's films, too. Maybe he tried too hard here to make it sexy, shocking and erotic and it comes across as really silly, in my opinion. As another reviewer wrote, for those of us who lived through the 60's this supposedly daring scene seems rather dated. Like.....sex....what's the big deal? I don't know the background of Ms. Nin, but apparently exploring and exploiting her sexuality was a big deal....so for those who are interested in that...here it is.
I think the film would have been much better if it had been more about Henry and June and less about Nin. Perhaps the casting was a problem for me, too, as I did not find Maria de Medeiros to be either beautiful or erotic. Nin was not very likable here either and failed to engage my sympathy. She seemed to be a spoiled, immature child-woman, who was living off of her husband's wealth while she indulged in her "writing" which was her diary. Although her husband, Hugo, adored her and enabled her to live this fantastic life in Paris, while folks at home in the US were standing in bread lines, she finds him "not lively" enough for her...a banker...how boring. She is, as another reviewer noted, a dead ringer for Betty Boop, which sort of spoiled the erotic effect for me. She has a child's mind and a child's body and her dance in which Miller is supposed to see "her true nature" was ridiculous. She is supposedly a champion for feminism, but she clings to her comfy lifestyle with Hugo while "expanding' her erotic repertoire with Henry and June. Then, like a child, she goes back to Hugo and writes about it all in her diary while she lies in bed with him. yuk
I did like Fred Ward, a charming and lusty Miller although he does the same squint-eyed thing in every scene. (I'd love to see Rip Torn, whom another reviewer said, was great as Miller in Tropic of Cancer.) The best of the major three was Uma Thurman who truly reeked of eros. Too bad she left after twenty five minutes of the film. To have had more of Ward and Thurman might have made for some real heat here. The little doe-eyed Medeiros, even after Miller unfurls her hair, still projects sly-ness more than sex. Another actress might have made this a much better film.
To be honest, I admit that I didn't see the last half hour of the film. I sat through more than I could bear, hoping that something significant would happen, but finally gave up.
Another excellent reviewer makes the distinction between eroticism and romance. This is eros, at least one man's attempt at it, and it fails to be interesting or exciting to me, maybe because there is so little development of the characters and hence very little romance. In real life there must have been more real emotion and romance to their relationships. I think Kauffman made a mistake in going for the sensational and failing to give us more of the actual characters of these people.
ATROCIOUS DOES NOT BEGIN TO DESCRIBE IT 
2009-10-04 - I watched this again years after my first viewing because I couldn't believe how incompetent it was. I didn't get through it the 2nd time, not even for laughs. And I thought I had been at fault!
Acting 101. Scriptwriting 101. This is a massive cliche in motion that shows an abysmally puerile portrayal of the 'bohemian life'. Everything about it betrays a freshman college (change that to freshman high school) understanding of the subject matter. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing to see that work like this got a major release. The embarrassment is too much.
It would be fair to explain just how the pathetic acting and risible slogan-lines collide to create this beyond-belief garbage, but as with the previous reviewer, I was almost left speechless too. Fred Ward's performance, in particular, is so rudimentary and desperate to persuade, that at times it feels like a parody of Henry Miller's persona.(Ever wonder why he never got a lead role again?)
I see this film has gotten rave reviews by many others, and I can only think that this may be due to youthful impressionability. If you haven't seen/read much about liberation from sexual and conventional mores, you may be forgiven for believing this flick is IT. You may also regret praising this junk to high heaven in the years to come.
In truth, "Henry & June" is so abysmally trite on every level, I'm not picking up any Henry Miller again after this trash.
Maybe it got wildly better after the first half hour
2009-07-18 - I've now watched this for half an hour, and I'll turn it off after I finish this review. I didn't expect that I would love this film, but I am surprised that I dislike it as much as I do. I don't find it romantic, European, 1930s-esque, racy, well-acted,... um, and everything else that those who rave about it found.
I am so surprised that other reviewers thought the New York and other accents were good - they are very grating to me, actor-y, like in a small city's community theater production or something.
It's slow. It tries to be cool and erotic but, ugh. (It has even drained my ability to communicate.) Very disappointing.
Delicious! 
2009-05-10 - The intense intimacy in this movie is just deliciously wonderful. You don't see much of any nudity, but it's still great! I've only owned it a week or two and have already watched it twice! If you want a good time, get this movie!
