The vintage tale of unrequited love, rediscovered love, sacrifice, honor and betrayal gets a new coat of paint giving the whole forced yarn an unconvincing tone. It was difficult for me to get into it because I couldn't get over the artifice. Although I believe it was shot on real locations - and the locations look great - the actors seem dressed an coiffed by a first class metropolitan expert. I didn't have a sense of hardship, I was told it was awful, but we didn't feel it. Naomi Watts gives her character a contemporary slant that it's not out of the rebellious spirit of a Garbo or Hepburn or Davis but of a miscalculation of the filmmakers. Edward Norton's timid monster is at times unbearable. You don't want this two people to get together because there is not a single moment in which I believe that the implied love is sincere. The lingering shots of the dying doesn't help one bit to make the artificial emotional storm any deeper. Everything happens too quickly although the pace goes from slow to very slow. Strange that after all said and done, compared with the recent film offerings, this is not all bad. However, I longed for the William Wyler of "The Letter"
Review of The Painted Veil
