The older story is the more absorbing. In 1873, on an island off the coast of New Hampshire, two Norwegian immigrant women are found murdered with an ax. A hapless man named Wagner (Ciaran Hinds) is convicted of the crime after a surviving eyewitness named Maren (Sarah Polley) testifies against him.
By the end of the movie, we will have a deeper understanding of the emotional undertow on the island, and we will know that Maren's love for her brother Evan (Anders W. Berthelsen) is at the center of the intrigue.
Maren is married to John Hontvedt (Ulrich Thomsen) but does not love him; her brother arrives on the island with his new bride Anethe (Vinessa Shaw), and there is also her sister Karen (Katrin Cartlidge, whose performance is a reminder of how much we lost when she died at such an early age).
The modern story takes place mostly on a luxury yacht chartered by two brothers, Thomas and Rich Janes (Sean Penn and Josh Lucas). Thomas' wife, Jean (Catherine McCormack), is a famous photographer who is working on a book about the famous crime, which still inspires controversy and revisionist theories. The others are along for the ride, including Rich's girlfriend, Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley). We learn, by indirection, tones of voice and body language, that the Penn character is jealous of his brother, indifferent to his wife, interested in the girlfriend.
The screenplay, by Alice Arlen and Christopher Kyle, doesn't try to force awkward parallels between the two stories, but they are there to be found: hidden and forbidden passion, sibling jealousy, the possibility of violence. The movie tells the two stories so separately, indeed, that each one acts as a distraction from the other. The fact that there are nine major characters and many lines of intrigue doesn't help; "Possession" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman" only had to deal with parallels between a 19th century couple and a 20th century couple.
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