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I've not seen anything in a couple of weeks, and I've had this for ages from Sofa Cinema.
XXXI: John Curran, The Painted Veil (2006).
Third adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel with versatile (or forgettable) Naomi Watts in the Garbo role.
In Edwardian London any hope has been given up about the marriage of Kitty Garstin (Watts) so she throws herself into a romance with the uptight and repressed bacteriologist Walter Fane(Edward Norton), who appears to be struggling to maintain his decorum and his English accent. He then drags her across to Shanghai, via a presumably too expensive to film Venice. Once there she immediately shags the local diplomat Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber, Watts's real life beau). Discovering the affair, Fane gives her the choice of divorce or a trip up country into an cholera epidemic.
Of course this has the very very fine ac-ting (Merchant Ivory eat your heart out) of this sort of heritage production, although what is suggested in earlier films is spelt out (without being too graphic). By the end, you can't help but think they deserve each other - Fane has been cruel and unsual in his punishment, but she has been unfaithful under his nose, and even up country she seeks solace elsewhere.
It is beautifully shot - the Chinese locations being fabulous, and the archive footage instantly evoked Shanghai twenty years before Ballard was there. A water wheel, set up to provide clean water for the village, is particularly fine on screen. And Toby Jones quietly steals the film from under everyone's noses as a Brit in the infected village. Overall, a very pretty melodrama.
Totals: 31 [Cinema: 12; DVD: 18; TV: 1]
XXXI: John Curran, The Painted Veil (2006).
Third adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel with versatile (or forgettable) Naomi Watts in the Garbo role.
In Edwardian London any hope has been given up about the marriage of Kitty Garstin (Watts) so she throws herself into a romance with the uptight and repressed bacteriologist Walter Fane(Edward Norton), who appears to be struggling to maintain his decorum and his English accent. He then drags her across to Shanghai, via a presumably too expensive to film Venice. Once there she immediately shags the local diplomat Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber, Watts's real life beau). Discovering the affair, Fane gives her the choice of divorce or a trip up country into an cholera epidemic.
Of course this has the very very fine ac-ting (Merchant Ivory eat your heart out) of this sort of heritage production, although what is suggested in earlier films is spelt out (without being too graphic). By the end, you can't help but think they deserve each other - Fane has been cruel and unsual in his punishment, but she has been unfaithful under his nose, and even up country she seeks solace elsewhere.
It is beautifully shot - the Chinese locations being fabulous, and the archive footage instantly evoked Shanghai twenty years before Ballard was there. A water wheel, set up to provide clean water for the village, is particularly fine on screen. And Toby Jones quietly steals the film from under everyone's noses as a Brit in the infected village. Overall, a very pretty melodrama.
Totals: 31 [Cinema: 12; DVD: 18; TV: 1]
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