Poetic Justice

NEIL LABUTE'S LITERARY DRAMA, POSSESSION

Gwyneth Paltrow is playing a Limey again, dressed in turtlenecks and high collars and with her hair in a big tight bun that's just begging to be undone. Aaron Eckhart, a little gaunter and hawkier of cheekbone than we remember him, is the designated bun loosener. Both play 21 st-century academics pursuing a literary mystery involving a couple of 19th-century poet-windbags (Jeremy Northam and the ravishing Jennifer Ehle, who looks like Meryl Streep plus sex). The picture is Possession, based on the A. S. Byatt novel. Neil LaBute directs, splitting the difference between the anticness of Nurse Betty and the emotional savagery of his first two films, In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors. Here, with academics depicted as literal grave robbers, the savagery is purely metaphorical. Witty and smart. (Rating: ★★★)

B.H.