The romance and chemistry between Maud Bailey and Roland Michell is the highlight of the film as we watch them blossom together as a couple. I was pretty involved in their relationship more than the relationship with Ash and his. They have great chemistry together and Gwyneth Paltrow stands out among this film and the cast. Aaron Eckhart is a great supporting player in the film and his character Roland seemed to be a modern Ash. The remaining five minutes of the film is ultimately breathtaking and very surprising as it pretty much sums the entire mystery to the film and all of its characters.

Though, the concept is underplayed, this is a movie within a movie about people from the present learning about people from the past involving love and life coming out of the experience with something special, but will the audience feel the same? Sounds complicated, yes, but it's ultimately a skewed concept that would have served its purpose as a good movie had it not been so orchestrated in a lowbrow manner. Gwyneth Paltrow is perceived in the opener as a basically stone cold and harsh woman who dresses in all black, but we never really get to learn why, and even then it's all a little blurry. The characters all seem misplaced throughout the entire movie as they're paired and matched together almost expecting the audience to become involved in their romance as its forced down our throats yet it all seems tacked on to the story without any real interest. The romance between theses two are ultimately more interesting than the older imaginative flashbacks of Ash and his love affair.
     These two characters who seem well off in the beginning, spend the entire movie looking for something that they so eagerly desire, they discover something about this famous historical and literal figure and his undocumented romance which was forbidden, but in the end after nearly two hours, you feel robbed after you discover what they find is boring, uninteresting and over thought romantic dribble. The romance between Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) and his other forbidden love Christabel Lamotte (Jennifer Ehle), but it's all so vapid throughout the story of the film as it progresses, and there's unusual twists and turns throughout the film that I never truly cared for to begin with. The characters are all so poorly developed and one-dimensional. Heck, in the end, there's a whole chase sequence involving the modern characters through the graveyard in which they attempt to unearth sacred garments and trinkets and it's all so boring. You watch as the entire movie pretends to build up to something ultimately breathtaking and it all inevitably becomes as exciting as a trip to the library.

Possession has ambitions to be more than mediocre but in the end, mediocre is a step up. This film is d-u-l-l-l, and even writing this review bored me.