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Directed by Noel Coward’s
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Easy Virtue I happened to
see the film version of Noel Coward’s early play “Easy
Virtue” on the same day that I saw Harold Ramis’s
“Year One,” – a mistake I don’t intend to repeat -- where a woman down the aisle from
me laughed uproriously at every penis joke, and grew
hysterical when they morphed into foreskin jokes. I didn’t find them obnoxious but
I did find them unfunny, along with everything else in the film. But let me leave that for another
review. What
is delicious about “Easy Virtue” is, and there’s no other
word for it, its civilization. We
learn more about each of the characters in it than the total of characters in
“Year One,” even if you were to Wikipedia the whole film. A moribund country house in the 1920s
with a harridan mother (Kristen Scott Thomas), her two unmarried daughters, a
Chihuahua who has the run of the house, and a husband, Whittaker (Colin
Firth) who would rather be anywhere else than in that house, welcomes the son
home with his bride, the American Larita (Jessica
Biel), who has just won the Monte Carlo grand prix in her BMW. Yes,
she turns out to have a secret, which is sprung on us toward the end of the
film, but before that moment we see the workings of a totally unwelcoming
household; the mother keeps putting fresh flowers in Jessica Biel’s
room, knowing that she has hayfever. The meals are living death to anyone
who understands cooking; at Thanksgiving Larita
prepares a turkey as a treat; no one eats it. She expected to stay only long enough
to make a convenient visit, but as the days stretch out she sees that her
husband Ben Barnes (John) is more attracted to the house than he is to
her. She has brought a present
– a cubist painting – that simply shocks the whole family (she
posed for it) and is quickly gotten rid of. But Larita
finds allies in Whittaker and the marvelous butler Jackson (Jim McManus), and
together they find a way to ease their way out. The
film is full of lovely in-jokes, including one pan of statuary outside the
building, where one Greek maiden is holding one arm up while the other is
playing with her crotch. The
cinematographer, Martin Kenzie, has found an
unobtrusive yet important use of mirrors throughout; it never gets in the way
but instead adds to the feel of the film. In addition, the use of contemporary
music (most by Coward himself) is essential to maintaining the feel of the
1920s. All in all, an excellent
film. |