Guy de Fraumeni’s Hollywod 1n The Hamptons

The Painted Veil

Co-producers and stars Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, with their director John Curran, have taken their cameras to a still exotic China for the third film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil, giving us another peek behind the cultural veil that obscures the reality of that vast nation. However, like the blindfolded fellow who felt the tail of an elephant, don’t expect to learn much about China from this film. It is not China, but marital dysfunction, that’s stage center here – a spoiled, bratty English socialite, marries a tepid bacteriologist out of desperation. Bored, she soon sleeps it up with a dashing diplomat. The wronged doc sweeps her away into China’s interior to assist in a cholera epidemic. The infectious work will cure the couple or kill them.

As the U.S. and China discreetly vie for a sort of Golden Globe award for best leading nation, it is fitting that their few cultural exchanges are subversively detrimental. China influenced the likes of Tarantino (Kill Bill) and Scorcese (The Departed) with martial arts style and we’ve inflated the likes of Zhang Yimou (Raise The Red Lantern) and his new Curse of the Golden Flower with the hubris of over-production and low cut gowns barely able to cover the hubris of inflated bosoms. I guess that if China can open its gates to McDonalds and Walmart, they’ll allow a classy movie to be shown, even if it pictures the peasants’ hard lives in the 1920s, a cholera epidemic, and political unrest (reined in a bit by today’s officials). Also up on the screen, with the gorgeous backdrop of southern China’s Guangdong province and its grandiose mountains, is colonial meddling in the form of righteous missionaries and, of course, the British, who stiffly attempt to impose their values upon other cultures.

Maugham’s 1925 novel’s concept of a rich girl raised to be of no use at all, feeling and acting superior to everyone, may get a lot of blank stares from today’s audiences, but the producers’ and director’s careful dramatization utilizes the period’s near-Victorian repression and social narrowness to create a fine, expansive performance, vis-à-vis “Merchant-Ivory,” with some tangy Sichuan heat added to its Shanghai bedroom oohs and aahs and downright tremulous rattling. It is Naomi Watts, as that vain creature Kitty, who sustains our empathy in spite of her snootiness and weakness. Maugham’s Kitty occupied the bulk of the book’s pages and was the focus of the 1934 film featuring Greta Garbo as well. 1957’s version with Eleanor Parker, The Seventh Sin, is as dull as a month-old razor’s edge, but still focuses on Kitty. Which leads me to wonder why Mr. Norton worked passionately for six years to get this version done. Nevertheless, with a good script by Ron Nyswaner (his first film since 1993’s Philadelphia), the film is a refined showcase for a mano a mano, Watt’s-Norton duet, which is much livelier than the pace of the film. That grinds slowly, very slowly.

As Walter, Edward Norton emotes with his dependable, interior-designed acting, which simmers with intensity. Ms. Watts, as Kitty, maintains the novel’s leading lady status, even when the screenplay tends to edit her out. Liev Schreiber, as the undiplomatic diplomat who toys with Kitty’s libido, is robust and sexy. It’s OK though, as he’s Naomi’s real-life boy toy. Demanding attention (and getting it) is Toby Jones, whose great performance as Truman Capote in Infamous was so unfortunately overshadowed by the earlier Capote bio. In The Painted Veil, he plays a neighbor of Walter and Kitty, a British commissioner called Waddington who’s been lodged in the belly of the dragon too long. He’s a colonist, expatriated by drugs and hazy laziness. Out there, looking dimpled and sweet in a nun’s wimple is (do you believe it?) a wise, French missionary – Diana Rigg! All hands keep this Junk a-sail and moving along despite its heavy, chunky pace.

The Painted Veil starts to crackle with feverish attraction as the two distant lover-combatants rediscover each other. The grueling village life, with its deadly infection, draws them together into a tight, perspiration-drenched love knot. A lush musical score by Alexandre Desplat literally sweats out the loathing the unhappily married couple hold for each other. Kitty can barely be contained as she becomes aware of the warmth of Walter’s innate goodness that was so long withheld. It is poignant and strong, trashing Maugham’s fine-boned china gentility.

I expect some might feel the film’s 125 minutes is as long as the six years it took to make it. Consider that, ironically, the 2004 SARS outbreak alone postponed it for a year. Have patience.

Guy Jean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of award-winning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at Major Film and TV award competitions, including the Oscars, the Emmy’s and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.