Theirs is as fine an acting duet as any this year
Because Somerset Maugham wrote a raft of bestsellers, he is often consigned by
success in his own time to a literary second tier. He wrote books that the
public loved and many of these led to richly made movies that gained great
public success - Of Human Bondage, The Razor’s Edge, Rain, to mention a few. A
Maugham story would not be Maugham if it did not deal with climate and class,
usually the effect of one upon the other. Maugham takes his western characters,
plunks them down in a difficult climate, usually tropical, and proceeds to make
a story of the relationships among them. The indigenous population and their
culture are merely background for Maugham’s dramas.
“The Painted Veil” is set in China,
somewhere in the vicinity of Shanghai in a hot, fly ridden village that is being
swept by a cholera epidemic. Director John Curran takes just seconds to
establish the fact that Kitty Fane (Naomi Watts) is imprisoned in the culture of
a British household whose matriarch who is obsessed by her determination to see
her daughters marry up. When Walter Fane (Edward Norton) falls in love with
Kitty, her mother is not satisfied with a civil service bacteriologist about to
be posted to Shanghai. Kitty marries him to escape propriety and shortly after
arriving in Shanghai, indulges herself in an adulterous affair with Charlie
Townsend (Liev Schreiber).
Walter imposes a fiendish punishment:
she will accompany him to a remote village in the heart of the epidemic. Bent
over his microscope, determined to stop the spread of cholera, Walter is unable
to forgive his wife’s adultery. “I knew when I married you that you were selfish
and spoiled.” He has willed himself into detachment and reserves what is inside
him for himself alone. The story is one of transformation – his, hers, and
theirs.
You will concentrate only on the
Europeans, and their uncomplaining acceptance of the climate. Everyone else is
background, in the Maugham fashion. The clothes are superb. Walter in a sweat
stained silk and linen vest over a wilting white shirt, Kitty in the light, low
waisted dresses of the ‘20s, always topped by a parasol to shield her from the
sun. . Anyone who loved Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel in “The Avengers” will smile at
the rich irony of this flamboyant British actress as Mother Superior.
The movie is filmed in deep, dark
colors in nearly windowless interiors – an appropriate setting for evenings that
pass in silence. Things move slowly, but it is this pace that allows the
characters to grow. If you are an action fan, look elsewhere. If you love to
watch characters develop, you will love the excellent, restrained performances
of Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. Theirs is as fine an acting duet as any this
year. It’s about Europeans in service to a distant world, about fate, anger, and
danger. It’s all from the pen of Somerset Maugham.
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