In 1931 Paris, aspiring French writer and obsessive diarist Anais Nin (de Medeiros) meets Henry Miller (Ward), an expatriate American who has come to Paris to become a writer himself. Nin and her banker husband Hugo Guiler (Grant) financially support the struggling Miller's efforts, but Nin also becomes sexually involved with the American. He talks incessantly about his bisexual wife June, a waitress and aspiring actress in New York about whom he is writing his first major work, "Tropic of Cancer." Eventually June comes to Paris and plays a cranky and demanding muse to the writers, both of whom obsess over and desire her. There are field trips to brothels, and Nin's sex life with her husband becomes more colorful as well. Philip Kaufman made this 1990 film, based on the steamy diary of Nin by the same name, right after "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," and though it is as gorgeous and steamily sensual as the earlier film (this was the first film to earn an NC-17 rating, as a classy alternative to X) and features some terrific performances (especially by WardUn and de Medeiros), it's not as coherent or thematically rich. Richly sensuous film, though.
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
