Possession

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score
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Release Date: August 16, 2002

On DVD/VOD: February 11, 2003

1h 42m | Drama, Romance, Thriller

Maud Bailey (Paltrow), a brilliant English academic given to doing things by the book, is researching the life and work of Victorian poet Christabel LaMotte (Ehle). Roland Michell (Eckhart) is an upstart American scholar in London on a fellowship to study the great Randolph Henry Ash (Northam). Ash, the poet laureate to Queen Victoria, is now best-known for a collection of rapturous, late-life poems dedicated to his wife that are going on centenary exhibition.

When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that appear to be from Ash to LaMotte, they follow a trail of clues across England to the Continent, echoing the journey of the impassioned couple over a century earlier.

Adapted from the novel Possession by A.S. Byatt.