Susan Granger’s review of “The Painted Veil” (Warner Independent)
Prepare to be magically transported to another world as this tragic, timeless love story unfolds in 1925 in pre-revolutionary China.
Kitty Garstin (Naomi Watts) is a selfish, spoiled London socialite who impulsively marries Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton), a dull, priggish bacteriologist working in Shanghai, just to escape her domineering mother. But once settled in the exotic Far East, she’s quickly bored, falling into a reckless affair with dashing Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber), a married diplomatic attachŽ. When Walter discovers her infidelity and Charlie refuses to leave his wife, Kitty has no choice but to accompany her self-righteous, vindictive husband on a dangerous mission into China’s remote Guangdong province to curb a cholera epidemic. Their arduous journey of self-discovery is a physical and emotional challenge as they become cut off from Western amenities and ‘civilization’ as they know it and dependent on the kindness of neighbors like the Deputy Commissioner (Toby Jones) and the Mother Superior (Diana Rigg) at a local orphanage.
This is actually the third movie version of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel; Greta Garbo starred in the first in 1934, Eleanor Parker in the second, named “The Seventh Sin,” in 1957. With a screenplay by Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia”) and directed by John Curran (“We Don’t Live Here Anymore”), this is the best of all – although British imperialism and its overt class consciousness, along with the social upheaval it caused, have long disappeared. The restrained performances are vivid and Stuart Dryburgh’s photography is sumptuous, particularly when juxtaposed with Alexandre Desplat’s resonant minor-chord score. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Painted Veil” is an alluring 9, a magnificent melodrama, taking its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Lift not the painted veil which those who live call Life.”
