While traveling in Paris, author Henry Miller and his wife, June, meet Anais Nin, and sexual sparks fly as Nin starts an affair with the openly bisexual June. When June is forced to return to the U.S., she gives Nin her blessing to sleep with her husband. Then, when June returns to France, an unexpected, and sometimes contentious, threesome forms.
Cinematography
Philippe Rousselot's hazy, candlelit Paris that breathes desire
Costume
June's androgynous glamour that launched a thousand thrift store searches
Acting
Thurman's feral, magnetic star-making performance
Director
Philip Kaufman
Fred Ward
Henry Miller
Uma Thurman
June Miller
Maria de Medeiros
Anais Nin
Richard E. Grant
Hugo Guiler
Kevin Spacey
Richard Osborn
Jean-Philippe Écoffey
Eduardo Sanchez
Bruce Myers
Jack
Juan Luis Buñuel
Publisher
Féodor Atkine
Paco Miralles
Sylvie Huguel
Emilia
Artus de Penguern
Brassai
Brigitte Lahaie
Henry's Whore
Maïté Maillé
Frail Prostitute
Annie Fratellini
The Patronne
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was the first film to receive the newly created NC-17 rating after the X rating became synonymous with pornography — the MPAA specifically cited a brief Uma Thurman nude scene.
Anais Nin's actual diaries were heavily edited for decades; the film draws from the unexpurgated versions that shocked literary circles in the 1980s with their frank bisexuality.
US
