Henry James subtle novel about the evils of heterosexuality has come out as a very TV-like drama with dignified Helena Bonham Carter taking off all her clothes!

A great story wasted--no other word possible--by an impossible script by someone called Hossein Amini.

Tons of money spent on great costumes, great photography, gone down the drain as James's delicate story of love-overcoming-lust is transformed into one of those who-told-on-who TV-series where breathless cliched dialogue is passed over as the principals undress and press against each other (to conceal nipples and other censorable parts) while they pant badly written dialogue of 1990s vintage.

Of course no movie today, no play, could reproduce the dialogue in a James novel, especially the later ones like The Wings of the Dove.

But the novel's laid in 1910 and Mr.Amini seems to have been spent his life never outside the range of The Television Set.

A sample: the anti-hero Merton Densher confronts the anti- heroine Kate Croy. He snarls at her. "You didn't stand me up--you set me up!"

Roll in your grave, Henry James! Hossein Amini has landed (on you)!

The story is still, more-or-less what it was in the 1904 novel: a couple are unhappily in love. He's not-rich, a writer. She's dependant on a rich aunt who has groomed her for a "good" marriage.

Into their world (from America) comes a rich young woman, Millie Teale. After they meet in London Millie, with her tons of money, takes not only her companion, Susan, but Kate, the penniless anti-heroine, to Venice.

While in London Kate has been pursued by Lord Mark who has told her that Millie Teale has an incurable illness, will soon die.

Kate's plan: to have Millie fall for, marry, Merton Densher so that when she dies, Merton, as her widower, will have enough money to make the anti-heroine secure.

The hitch is that Millie is so loving that when she does die the pair cannot enjoy the money. They are under her spell: the wings of the dove.

Allen Ginsberg, when very young, wrote a very good poem--this when he was in college --noting the celestialness of love: there were lines-- I quote from memory which went:

It was engendered in the air

And the novel The Wings of the Dove is about that Kingdom. Kate Croy is drawn to Merton Densher not because he has a big basket or great pecs. He elevates her soul. And the pair are drawn in turn to Millie Theale because of the fire of her spirit (James, who's not big into physical stuff has given her red hair).

The second meeting of Kate and her soul-lover is in the Underground. They sit opposite each other and their eyes meet. That's the novel.

Here's the movie: He sees her in the Underground. They are in the same train. He gets up and offers her his seat, still warm from his tush (not likely in England at that time). When they get out they are alone in a subway elevator. He closes the gates and they go into a deep clinch and the cutting is such you are given to understand they have a Underground Zipless Fuck (talk about the mile-high club!)

Get that, Henry!

Everything depends on your being able to move into the souls of the trio. And there is one scene that's done right, where Millie, dying tells Merton they've move up far beyond the World's Truth, but by that time the viewer has been so assaulted s/he feels that s/he's run out of the house of an abusive spouse, hailed a cab and run into a police station for refuge.

Odd note: Kate's aunt, who in the book is a heavy lady keeping company with heavy furniture is now cast as an Irony Harpy, skinny and hellish, and she's wonderfully played by Charlotte Rampling. But the damned script's so choppy she doesn't reappear later and you don't quite understand if Kate's gotten free of her or not.

Kate's fatal illness, unnamed in the book, in the movie at one point seems to be cancer (she seems to be getting radiation therapy) at other to be consumption (lots of coughing).

The promotion image used for the film, seems to show a love triangle with three-in-a-boat (gondola), Helena Bonham Carter (that's Kate Croy) raising her arms, one hand touching the neck of Merton Densher (Linus Roache), the other the neck of Millie Theale (Alison Elliot)--and Millie is looking at Kate with intent, if you catch my drift.

The shot is not a still from the film. There's a moment in a long shot of a Venetian evening when Millie reaches out to Kate (I think they are in separate gondolas) but nothing as "significant" as this threesome pose.

Marilyn Monroe, in All About Eve was given some funny lines.

She's sick from stage-nausea after trying an audition and asks the critic who is taking her around, "Are there auditions in television?"

He replies "Television is all auditions".

Sitting back in the movie theatre watching glorious throw-away OVERHEAD SHOTS of Venice fill the screen you feel some nutty pin-headed producer/director telling us he has money to burn, can afford real expensive overhead shots, all done with the glee of a four-year-old boy showing the big upward arch-steam he can make when he pees.

But movies are not overhead shots which look good in coming attractions.

The Wings of the Dove was a novel about two people who, to keep their union, would betray the love of a third person. But they found it was themselves they had betrayed.

Credits here: Director: Iain Softley. Producers: Stephen Evans, David Parfitt.

Three people who felt they could make money sexing up Henry James.