Would, could The Portrait of a Lady actually be a good movie?

So two of the rejected suitors, Lord Warburton and Ralph Tochett, whom we'd met in the first scene of Henry James's "The Portrait of a Lady," as they gathered at the afternoon tea at which Warburton was warned not to court Isabel Archer, now commisserate and lick their wounds. Ralph basically admits he has been in love with his cousin Isabel, though he's too ill to consider marriage. The two of them are supposedly off to Sicily, but as they discover neither wants to go, they each want to stay in Rome (?), Isabel has now settled in her horrible marriage. Ralph knows that he has given up any chance to be close to Isabel because he warned her that Osmond was an evil man - even though he was right, she would never accept that she should have listened to his advice. More significant, as foreseen, Warburton is in love with Osmond's daughter/Isabel's stepdaughter, Pansy. This will clearly lead to the ultimate confrontation of the novel: Osmond will want his daughter to marry the wealthy Warburton, and Isabel will stand up for her right to marry the man she loves, Rosier - even though this will further alienate her from Warburton, who may yet exact some kind of revenge. Well, we've come a long way to get to this point! Reading Portrait I occasionally think, as we all do, of who should play the parts, and I was pretty sure that a younger John Malkovitch would be a great Osmond - only to learn in poking thru a film encyclopedia that there was a 1990s Campion movie of the book with Malkovitch (assume he does play Osmond, I didn't actually check). That said, how could it be a good movie? So little happens outside of conversations and nuances of feeling. On the other hand, maybe the book needs to be distilled down to a 90-page screenplay - but then it wouldn't be James, it would be just a classy melodrama - typically Campion material/mishandling of literature, btw (see her very disappointing Bright Star, or rather don't see it)?