Possession - 2002 - 7/10

Dovetailing, if unequal, stories of love, mystery, betrayal, and poetry.
One shimmers with intensity, the other is shallow.
A professor’s research assistant finds a fragment of correspondence hidden within a reference book.
In the finest scholarly tradition, he simply takes it.
The fragment hints at a hitherto unknown relationship between a major Victorian poet and a lesser one.
Our learned thief enlists another scholar, and off they sally in quest of Truth.

The Victorian narrative is far more compelling, ravishing even. The understatement is aching at times.
The scenery is wondrous, the wordplay exquisite.
Indeed, watching this leads one to bemoan what passes for conversation or correspondence nowadays.
The latter day story is glossy, vacuous and crude in comparison.

Our amateur sleuths (cast with an eye toward the American market) engage and behave as if they had wandered in off a teenage romantic comedy.
They delve into a richer past, perhaps their way of dealing with personal shortcomings, academic and emotional.
For lovers of language and Victorian costumers, this may be irresistible.
Just brace for the drop in IQ and EQ of the latter counterpart.