A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: The Painted Veil

Date Viewed: 1/7/07

Details:

Naomi Watts

Edward Norton

Liev Schreiber

Toby Jones

Diana Rigg

Ian Rennick

Director: John Curran

Score: 1/2

The Review: At least a three layer cake of nuance: a broken marriage in need of repair; a pending struggle between the Nationalists and Communists in early 20th-century China; and an exploration of the stunning landscape of China's Guangxi province.

It's 1925, and the focal character, socialite and rich daughter Kitty (Watts), starts out as a spoiled brat; it's difficult for her to garner much interest from the audience. Not unattractive but totally self-centered, she just seems bent on making one stupid decision after another. She seems to come into her own in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a cholera epidemic. She's drawn there -- actually, almost forced to go there -- by her estranged husband Walter Fane (Norton), who delivers an ultimatum in the wake of her infidelity. Fane's character is advertised as a clinical bacteriologist -- although watching him in practice, he seems to be more of an epidemiologist -- and he chooses to relocate from Hong Kong to a remote province of China to help deal with a devastating epidemic. Besides a graphic illustration of culture clash, there is also some significant and unexpected character growth as the movie progresses.

Good supporting cast, although the film itself drags and has some minor construction faults. Rennick is good as the local English ex-pat. The welcome surprise is that Dianna Rigg is wearing the veil again, and it's not the veil of the title, but that of a convent. She plays a wry and world-familiar Mother Superior of a group of nuns who are helping to tend the sick and focus on the well-being of the children of the village at the center of the epidemic. This harkens back to her role as Philippa Talbot in an 1975 TV play based on Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede. It's always a pleasure to watch Rigg, and she has not lost any allure due to age, or the veil.

I went to this movie with visions of Guangxi (Guang Zho) in my mind, expecting to be blown away by the landscape and to find the plot of lesser interest. Some of this came from the movie poster, some from its trailers, more from seeing photographs of the severe and eroded limestone landscape over many years, but mostly from the prominence of this same landscape in Chinese & Buddhist drawings and screens from across many centuries. While aesthetically attractive, it turned out to be mere background only, not even a minor character; it's hard to be blown away by background, especially when you don't see enough of it. So for all its faults, the plot is of more interest than its site.

From the novel by W. Somerset Maugham.

(27-Jan-07)

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