INCREASINGLY BANKABLE YET loathed by many, Neil LaBute is a man of more schisms than you can find anywhere this side of the medieval papacy. He's a Mormon; he's the author of sexo-violently lurid stage plays. He's the writer-director of In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, two horrifically funny exercises in indie-flick psychological sadism; he's the director of Nurse Betty, a witty, occasionally savage yet ultimately nice-making movie about posttraumatic delirium.

And now he's the director – most pointedly not the author – of Possession, a bucket of upmarket Miramax sentimental slop that's as Merchant-Ivory as contemporary-lit adaptations get. I grow confused. There must be a career game plan here. How can you be so "edgy" it cuts, then suddenly be all about putting Gwyneth Paltrow through laughter 'n' tears and making her play her emo xylophone from whisper to scream? Oh, right: Hollywood.

Nurse Betty struck me as a very acceptable compromise en route to the mainstream. It was funny and idiosyncratic, "dark" in surprising little jags, warm in a way that made basic narrative sense. There may never be a better use for Renée Zellweger than her titular role as a sunshiny diner waitress in domestic-abuse denial who flees to La-La Land after witnessing some real-world horror. The inevitability of her fantasy collapsing gave Betty real juice, and the film provided excellent character opportunities for Morgan Freeman, Crispin Glover, Tia Texada, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, and Allison Janney.

Possession, however, may well be unfilmable. A.S. Byatt's novel is an elaborate literature-about-literature construct in which two modern-day academics hunt down evidence linking two Victorian authors, one obscure, the other still fabled. Naturally, the push-pull tentative romance between the latter-day researchers comes to mirror the more tragically thwarted wuv of the late greats, even as they Nancy Drew-out those elders' bodice-ripping secrets via a trail of hidden letters and near-lost mementos. The preciousness of Byatt's perfectly aped faux-Victorian poetry and correspondence is suffocating. (See Theodore Roszak's Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein and Matthew Kneale's English Passengers for retro-Victorian fiction that works.) But it seemed possible the inevitable compromises of moviemaking might work to the story's advantage.

It does, if you've been pining for Harlequin romanticism tarted up with just enough contemporary angst, ersatz Stoppardian wit, and poetry-quoting voice-overs to suggest this chocolate-cake cinema is actually good for you. Ergo brash, slobbish, and love-burnt Yankee abroad Roland (Aaron Eckhart), summer-interning at a London museum, stumbles on clues unexpectedly linking the great Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) to largely forgotten "spinster" (i.e., lesbian) poetess Christabel LaMotte. (Byatt loosely based these characters on Robert Browning and Christina Rossetti, though in real life they most certainly did not swap tongue.) Wanting to keep his suspicions secret until they're confirmed, Roland begs assistance from his opposite number: humorless feminist historian (groan) Maud (Paltrow), who's an authority on, as well as a distant blood relation, to LaMotte. Annoying each other until only love can result, the modern brats retrace their subjects' barely documented steps nearly 150 years earlier. The past, of course, is passionate and tragic; the present involves a lot of tantrums that end in a clinch.

Paltrow can be very funny, but here, she furrows her brow so incessantly it seems to plead for its own Oscar. Her English accent likewise requires more concentration than is good for self or viewing public. Possession is at core escapist, a fantasy of how ivory-tower brainiacs might ideally get together and get it on, but Paltrow's overfocused miserabilism helps drain the material of any upscale fantasy life. Eckhart (loyally cast by LaBute in all his features to date) comes off much better. For one thing, he's handsome in a large-featured way that flies against the Tom Cruise-alike generic standard we've had for a couple decades. He also bears up under limiting circumstances (underwritten, ugly-American-stereotype style) as a prickly pseudoslacker who might credibly find careerist excitement in 150-year-old communications. Maud and Roland's excitement about each other remains more plot convenience than felt experience.

Possession looks conventionally "lush" in its wide-screen photography and steady art-house pacing. Yet the flashbacks never convince as anything but costume drama, and the present-day histrionics never get past two characters' annoying self-absorption. This may no doubt become a leg up for LaBute. But his distinctive authorial character – best represented by the deliciously over-the-top-tart Your Friends and Neighbors – is entirely absent here. What price success? Just the usual soul, it would seem.