the painted veil
john curran
enjoyed the painted veil and it grows on me the more i think abt it. it's a simple story of a couple who meet, marry, weather a crisis, then fall in love. the focus of the movie is largely on them yet the 2 hours don't feel overly long because ed norton (walter fane) and naomi watts (kitty fane) simply bring their characters to life. kitty agrees to marry walter because it means freedom from her mother, not because she loves him. but as she later points out to him, she never pretended to be something she wasn't. he knew this but married her all the same, hoping that he would win her over. it turns out to be a recipe for disaster and she embarks on an affair. walter finds out and in a fit of anger, decides to punish her by dragging her along to a cholera outbreak area in the interior of china. isolated from the rest of the world, they are forced to confront with what has happened.
there are elements of melodrama - an affair, a pregnancy, a death - but they are dealt with in emotionally truthful scenes. at one point, kitty laughs and asks if a woman has ever loved a man for his virtue, but this is precisely what happens to kitty, and the ending shows us that this love has transformed her into a woman of virtue as well. it's ultimately about the redemptive power of love, but it's never preachy.
the exotic locales were fully utilised and the cinematography was lush and gorgeous.
liked the fact that nothing was black-and-white in the movie, that even the orphanage run by the nuns was not seen as an unadulterated good.
there was also the curiosity factor of seeing anthony wong, brows perpetually furrowed, in an english-speaking role. and that the prc government had final cut approval.
in 6 words: love in the time of cholera