Henry & June
Short description
Set in Paris in the early 1930s, Henry & June follows the American writer Henry Miller and his wife, June, whose arrival in the city draws them into the orbit of the diarist Anaïs Nin. Nin, restless in her conventional marriage to Hugo Guiler, is drawn first to Henry and then, more unexpectedly, to June. When June leaves for the United States, she leaves the two of them free to pursue each other, and the relationship that develops among the three, complicated further when June comes back to France, unsettles Nin's domestic life and feeds the writing for which she became known. The script by Philip Kaufman and Rose Kaufman draws on Nin's diaries and on Miller's autobiographical writing.
The film is a Philip Kaufman production, released in 1990 between The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Rising Sun in a directing career that began with The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid. Philip Kaufman wrote the screenplay with Rose Kaufman, and Peter Kaufman produced. Fred Ward plays Henry Miller, Uma Thurman plays June, Maria de Medeiros plays Anaïs Nin, Richard E. Grant plays Hugo Guiler, and Kevin Spacey and Jean-Philippe Écoffey appear in supporting roles.
Made for a wide release by Universal Pictures with Walrus & Associates, the film took about 12 million dollars worldwide, a modest return for a period drama of its length. On TMDB it holds a rating of 6 out of 10 from 239 votes, while film critics gave it 6.1 out of 10 across 25 reviews, placing the two measures close together.
What's left behind the scenes
- For filming, Fred Ward, who has brown eyes, wore blue contact lenses.
- Fred Ward played the role of Henry Miller (1891-1980), replacing Alec Baldwin two weeks before filming began.
- That same year, another film about Miller’s life was released – “Quiet Days in Clichy,” directed by French filmmaker Claude Chabrol.
- It was the first film to be given an NC-17 rating (no one 17 or under admitted), after it was introduced to replace the X rating (no one under 17 admitted). The film received the NC-17 rating for a two- or three-second scene at the beginning, where Maria de Medeiros’ character examines an erotic Japanese postcard depicting a woman and an octopus.
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