Henry & June

1990 film by Philip Kaufman

Henry & June is a 1990 American biographical drama film in which Anaïs Nin meets the American writer, Henry Miller, in Paris in 1931. She keeps a diary of her sexual awakening which includes Henry and his wife, June.

I've done the vilest things - the foulest things - but I've done them... superbly.
Directed by Philip Kaufman. Written by Philip Kaufman and Rose Kaufman.
A True Adventure More Erotic Than Any Fantasy

Anaïs Nin edit

  • Oh, Henry, I want to know what you want to know. I want my life to match your life.

Henry Miller edit

  • And that's our task. Liberation. Freedom. Let's toast to Lawrence. Let's toast to our defects. Toast, to our friendship. Drink cold, piss warm.
  • I'd believe only in a god that understood how to dance. Isn't that something?

June Miller edit

  • I've done the vilest things - the foulest things - but I've done them... superbly.
  • I wanna be drunk. And make... you drunk. Because I'm intimidated by you. I need to feel free to say anything, and know that you'll forgive me.
  • It's a distortion. Henry, Look at me! Look! You can't see me or anyone as they are! I wanted Dostoyevsky!
  • [Late at night in bed with Anaïs] I don't know why, I keep on thinking of this little Chinese restaurant that Henry and I used to go after I got off work. He'd wait for me outside the dance hall at two in the mornin', then we'd rush through the freezin' cold holding each other tight. We'd get there just before closing time sit in a booth by the window eatin' chow mein, watchin' the snow swirl by. There was some kind of unbelievable thrill in the air between us. I feel kind of haunted by it now. Chin Lees. Its funny, it seems like a dream.

Hugo Guiler edit

  • You fall in love with people's minds.
  • Does she think she can love anything in you I haven't loved?

Dialogue edit

Anaïs Nin: I'm passing through a crisis Eduardo.
Eduardo Sanchez: Be careful Anaïs, abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.

Henry Miller: I'm not a portrait painter.
June Miller: I'll say you're not. Look what you've done to Anais. You make everything ugly! Beauty is a joke for you. You're so negative. You're a failure as a writer. You're not a man, you're a child! You use women! You used me, you fucker!
Henry Miller: AAAHHH!
June Miller: You fucker!

Henry Miller: Hell of a place you got here, Hugo. Peaceful. Been here long?
Hugo Guiler: Just since the crash.
'Henry Miller: Since the crash? How did you live before?
Hugo Guiler: We lived well. This is Henry Miller, the American writer Osborn is putting up. My wife, Anaïs Nin.
Henry Miller: How are you, Anaïs?
Hugo Guiler: Eduardo Sanchez, Anaïs' cousin. Anaïs, you should read Henry's stuff.
Richard Osborn: For my money, he's got it over D.H. Lawrence.
Anaïs Nin: I'd love to read your writing.
Richard Osborn: He hasn't been published yet.

Henry Miller: All right, I'll tell you. June appeared like an Angel, and I offered her a fool's faith. She was a taxi dancer. I paid my dime, she put her head on my shoulder, but then the lies began. She told me her mother was a gypsy and her father was a count. Later, I saw a film and realized she swiped her whole childhood right out of the film.
Anaïs Nin: And so?
Henry Miller: So I married her.

Richard Osborn: Then he steals my ideas and puts them in his novels.
Anaïs Nin: Henry wouldn't do that, Richard.
Richard Osborn: I'm sure of it.

June Miller: What don't I understand?
Anaïs Nin: That I love you.
June Miller: Love? You just want experience. You're a writer. You make love to whatever you need. You're just like Henry.

Anaïs Nin: How would you lie to June if you were making love to her?
Hugo Guiler: Making love to her?
Anaïs Nin: Yes. To her body. To her voluptuous body. She is so perverse, so naked. Tell her that you love her.
Hugo Guiler: I love you.

Anaïs Nin: Possess her like a man. I want to fuck her like a man. Fuck her, Hugo.
Hugo Guiler: I am fucking her, pussy willow.

Henry Miller: She is my fucking wife.
Anaïs Nin: You don't understand your own fucking wife.

Cast edit

External links edit

 
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