The thing about this particular movie is that it had a good story. And it could've been a great movie just telling said story. But the movie decided to be artsy. And it was ruined for that. Then it got messy, dragged itself for ages in senseless scenes, and its greatest sin, wasted a solid performance for Vanessa Redgrave.

While there have been many versions of Henry James' short story "The Aspern Papers", only the 1947 film "The Lost Moment" has had any type of impact, and unfortunately, this story version fails to live up to that. Like Robert Cummings in that version, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is dreadfully miscast. In fact, he is downright embarrassing, equivalent to Robert Redford in "Out of Africa", John Malkovich in "Dangerous Liasons" and Keanu Reeves in "Bram Stoker's Dracula". Unfortunately, he gets more screen time than Joey Richardson and Vanessa redgrave, so you are forced to endure him which at times is torture.

While on the surface Susan Hayward seemed wrong for the role of Tina, she was quite right in choices she made in her performance, and Joely Richardson is decent. She is not photographed in a flattering light which really works here because the character of Tina, the niece of the extremely old Julianna (Vanessa Redgrave), is supposed to be like the character of Catherine in James' even more famous story "Washington Square".

As for Redgrave, she does not appear to be anywhere near a 100 plus year old woman (seemingly jokingly said to be over 150), and at times, she seems to be emulating Katherine Hepburn and at other times the old chrone in "Snow White". She goes from demonic and seemingly evil in some scenes to sweet and extremely spiritual in others, and I had a difficult time grasping who this character was. At least with Agnes Moorehead, her footage was limited so you really only saw her as he extremely old lady with some very deep dark secrets.

There are other elements that are confusing as well. For some reason, there appears to be a bisexual liaison between Meyers, Richardson and a very handsome man who really serves no purpose. As the film is only 90 minutes, had they give some detail to that, it might have been more believable.

The film certainly is gorgeous to look at, and the classical music is generously played throughout, but emotionally, this is as empty as Juliana and Tina's lives, and even if I had not known what the letters regarded, I wouldn't have cared to stick around to find out. Perhaps some classic novelettes just can't be film successfully or would require someone with an artistic understanding of the writer's intentions, but from what I've seen, "The Aspern Papers" should be just left alone.