Watching the trailer for this film several times, I thought, oh, oh, what we've probably got here is a production reminiscent of typical Merchant-Ivory fluff: a so-so enacted drama wrapped in a gorgeous travelogue to disguise the movie's shortcomings. Turns out that's about right.
The story, adapted from the novel by Somerset Maugham, is set in 1925 in China. It concerns the frayed relationship of a young married couple, neither of whom is attractive enough to me to care much about, one way or the other. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) is an English microbe hunter, a humorless workaholic, trying to stem the evil tide of a cholera epidemic. His wife, Kitty (Naomi Watts), has the imagination of a jackrabbit.
All Kitty can think of to relieve her boredom is to strike up an affair with a narcissistic, very much married fellow, Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber). Oh, well, to paraphrase Rummy, you don't go into a movie that has the very best group of characters you could ever want, you go with the group the filmmakers have given you. And, so, it is difficult to warm to the opening of love between the Fanes, after they leave Shanghai in favor of the isolated back country where the epidemic is raging.
In fact, it is the rugged, isolated location where most of the story takes place that is the most attractive aspect of this film. Guangxi Province, in southern China, features spiky limestone mountains and glorious rivers. Thank goodness a skilled DP, Stuart Dryburgh, was on hand to record the stupendous beauty of the setting. The couple sitting next to us at the screening had biked through Guangxi just last summer. They say the area is virtually no different today than as depicted in 1925. The towns are humble. Carts drawn by livestock, and wooden passenger conveyances carried by men on foot, are still quite common.
The best turns are by Toby Jones, as the dissipated but sweet ex-pat, Waddington; Diana Rigg as the Mother Superior of a local orphanage where Kitty finds useful work for a change, teaching music to the kids; and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as Col. Yu, an ultra cool military attaché to Dr. Fane, who saves Fane's bacon by subtly intimidating the local warlord into allowing proper disposition of deceased cholera victims. The music throughout is lustrous, brilliant, too much so in fact. The music is downright commanding, providing an unavoidable thrust of manipulation that is all too familiar to us from a gazzilion Hollywood extravaganzas. (In Mandarin & English) My grades: 6.5/10 (low B) (Seen on 12/28/06)
The story, adapted from the novel by Somerset Maugham, is set in 1925 in China. It concerns the frayed relationship of a young married couple, neither of whom is attractive enough to me to care much about, one way or the other. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) is an English microbe hunter, a humorless workaholic, trying to stem the evil tide of a cholera epidemic. His wife, Kitty (Naomi Watts), has the imagination of a jackrabbit.
All Kitty can think of to relieve her boredom is to strike up an affair with a narcissistic, very much married fellow, Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber). Oh, well, to paraphrase Rummy, you don't go into a movie that has the very best group of characters you could ever want, you go with the group the filmmakers have given you. And, so, it is difficult to warm to the opening of love between the Fanes, after they leave Shanghai in favor of the isolated back country where the epidemic is raging.
In fact, it is the rugged, isolated location where most of the story takes place that is the most attractive aspect of this film. Guangxi Province, in southern China, features spiky limestone mountains and glorious rivers. Thank goodness a skilled DP, Stuart Dryburgh, was on hand to record the stupendous beauty of the setting. The couple sitting next to us at the screening had biked through Guangxi just last summer. They say the area is virtually no different today than as depicted in 1925. The towns are humble. Carts drawn by livestock, and wooden passenger conveyances carried by men on foot, are still quite common.
The best turns are by Toby Jones, as the dissipated but sweet ex-pat, Waddington; Diana Rigg as the Mother Superior of a local orphanage where Kitty finds useful work for a change, teaching music to the kids; and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as Col. Yu, an ultra cool military attaché to Dr. Fane, who saves Fane's bacon by subtly intimidating the local warlord into allowing proper disposition of deceased cholera victims. The music throughout is lustrous, brilliant, too much so in fact. The music is downright commanding, providing an unavoidable thrust of manipulation that is all too familiar to us from a gazzilion Hollywood extravaganzas. (In Mandarin & English) My grades: 6.5/10 (low B) (Seen on 12/28/06)