Critic Reviews

With Henry & June, [Kaufman] has had the courage to look at the many unconventional faces of love with grace and sympathy. It is a daring and major accomplishment by one of our foremost film artists. [05 Oct 1990, p.E1]

Henry & June is a difficult, uncompromising work whose best qualities are not likely to be appreciated by all filmgoers. But it is, quite simply, the most overwhelming film about ultimate freedom to reach us in years. [19 Oct 1990, p.12]

Henry and June may be as sexually explicit as any major Hollywood production since the early '70s, but it is also intelligent, well-acted and expertly crafted. [05 Oct 1990]

A beautiful movie, probably more erotic than any mainstream film ever made and yet never remotely pornographic, at other times hilariously funny. [05 Oct 1990, p.3F]

Some will think this film silly; my guess is that Kaufman has himself an upscale cult movie, a la Women in Love or his own Unbearable Lightness. [05 Oct 1990, p.4D]

An odd, slightly distanced tone seeps into the movie, almost as if the director were working in a foreign language. Only this keeps Henry & June from being a great movie. But in no way does it hold it back from being a beautiful, captivating and spectacularly uninhibited one.

Henry & June, a portrait of two pioneers in prose, accomplishes its own kind of pioneering on screen and not merely because it's unapologetically erotic: it effortlessly pairs that oddest of all couples, sexual desire and cerebral activity. It is, as a friend commented in a phrase Nin and Miller would have loved, "an erection for the mind." [05 Oct 1990]

The film has a rich visual tone and a sparse narrative quality. [05 Oct 1990, p.E15]

It's wry and stylish and perfectly cast, and only occasionally does it fall into the trap of taking itself as seriously as its characters sometimes do. [05 Oct 1990, p.26]

Henry & June doesn't finally cohere, but there's something noble in its evocation of the erotic in all its pleasure and pathos. [22 Oct 1990, p.74]