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MovieMail's Review
John Curran’s award-winning adaptation of Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel The Painted Veil is a sombre and serious film that is both a complex, morally ambiguous examination of a relationship struggling to cope in the aftermath of an affair, and a genuinely affecting and intelligent treatment of a little-seen historical upheaval (In other words, think Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach by way of Graham Greene's The Quiet American).
It opens with Dr Walter Fane (a brittle and introverted English bacteriologist played by Fight Club's Edward Norton) and his wife, Kitty (the always excellent Naomi Watts) travelling, together but separately, in sedan chairs through the Chinese interior. It is 1925 and China is in the grip of both a cholera epidemic and Imperialist unrest (with Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalists stirring up a hornet's nest of anti-Western feeling) – but, from the look on Kitty's face and the stunted interplay between her and her husband, we know this is no period costume picture postcard drama.
Kitty, it seems, married in haste and repented (equally hastily) at leisure, taking a lover from the Shanghai ex-pat set in the form of playboy diplomat, Charlie Townsend (Liev Schriber). Walter discovers the affair and offers Kitty a stark choice: either he will divorce her for adultery or she can travel with him to a small cholera-infected Chinese village. Disgrace or death, in other words. Kitty settles on death. At least at first.
With towering performances from the two leads (who also produced the film), sumptuous cinematography from New Zealander Stuart Dryburgh (that recalls no other film so much as Terence Malick's The Thin Red Line) and solid support from the likes of Diana Rigg and Toby Jones, The Painted Veil ticks all of the boxes and then some when it comes to serious literary adaptation.
Inspired both by Dante's Purgatorio and Maugham's own unhappy marriage, The Painted Veil – which has been filmed both successfully (with Greta Garbo in 1934) and unsuccessfully (as The Seventh Sin in 1957) – is the kind of film that a certain type of viewer might say they don't make any more. Highly recommended.
Making of... featurette with Edward Norton, Naomi Watts and John Curran.
Film Description
The third film version of Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel - directed by John Curran - is ripe with stunning Chinese locales and a smart turn from Naomi Watts as Kitty Fane, the aging English socialite who must put herself in strange and turbulent surroundings before she finds her true self.
A complex and beautiful international production, this adaptation benefits greatly from the lack of restrictions that inhibited its previous incarnations in 1925 (with Greta Garbo) and in 1957 (as The Seventh Sin).
After pressure from her wealthy parents to settle down, Kitty (Naomi Watts) marries mild-mannered bacteriologist Walter (Edward Norton), despite her lack of love for him. Shortly after their vows, he takes her to Shanghai, where she immediately has an affair with Charles Townsend (Liev Shrieber), an English Vice Consul.
Walter becomes aware of Kitty's indiscretion and promptly whisks her away to the mountain village of Mei-tan-fu, where they befriend another English expat, the secretly decadent Deputy Commissioner Waddington (Toby Jones, in an extremely likeable performance).
Walter begins working to hold an encroaching cholera epidemic at bay - leaving Kitty to ponder her role in the situation as death looms over the village like a spectre. A labour of love that took the better part of a decade for producer Norton and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner, The Painted Veil is a large, complex, and visually sumptuous production.
Norton's passion for the material is on full display, as he turns in another solid performance. Watts, however, is the heart of the film, all bee-stung lips and sweat on porcelain skin.
