| Overall Grade: |
A- |
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| Story: |
A- |
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| Acting: |
A |
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| Direction: |
B |
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| Visuals: |
A |
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Slow, Meandering But Not Unworthy
by Renato (movies profile)
Jul 8, 2008
36
of
42 people found this review helpful
This is the film Merchant/Ivory should've done, instead of The White Countess. It has all the tell-tale signs of a lovingly reconstructed period piece, that Ismail Merchant should've gone out with.
January is usually the time which coughs up also-ran worthy films -- the kind of film, The Painted Veil truly is.
Not spectacularly reviewed. Not with a lot of Oscar buzz appended to it. But noticeably not an unworthy film.
The story doesn't begin as it will end, either in locale, and interestingly, not in tone.
These are two separate films, bookending each other, which at the end does satisfy the viewer, but you have to be PATIENT with it.
If you are patient, you will be rewarded with a fine story of the awakening of love, rather than that blinding coup de foudre, "romantic" films yield today (the passably cute, but rather dim, The Holiday, being a case in point).
Somerset Maugham wrote the novel, and Greta Garbo starred in the original The Painted Veil in 1934 (also recommended for viewing).
The story is similar.
Young, pretty, spoilt but aging London girl from a good family (on the shelf for marriage in a couple of years, if she doesn't marry immediately), takes a chance to escape the oppresiveness of her home routine, and marries a rather taciturn medical doctor, who lives in Shanghai. Once there, she hates it, and starts to find a way out of an already stultifyingly boring marriage.
That's Part 1 of the film. A very slow-moving, uncharismatic part, I may add.
It's Part 2, that makes this film a gift to those who have the patience to stick around.
Perhaps the accents Edward Norton and Naomi Judd are oafishly inconsistent. Perhaps the Chinese characters are not fleshed out, except for the Captain of the National Guard.
Perhaps, even, the storyline wanders in and out, seemingly without purpose.
But at the end, it works.
Beautifully photographed, with the usual exceptional acting by Diana Rigg in a cameo as the French Mother Superior (French accent implied more than mimicked), this film falls just short of a gem.
But it glistens in the cold January light, just the same. |
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