The Painted Veil Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between two people
Forgiveness comes at a price
This love story has Kitty meeting young, intelligent, shy and somewhat dull Dr. Walter Fane, whose forte is the study of infectious diseases, and the convenient marriage that she finds herself committed too. It is in this web of intrigue that they head for China, only after Walter discover's Kitty's infidelity with one dashing and witty Diplomat Charlie Townsend. So much as to hide her from herself and to help thwart a cholera outbreak, this is a marriage more than on the rocks. This is a cold, indifferent and loveless partnership in a vast unknown and deadly environment that will test both these flightless lovebirds and with the hardships and tolerances more than any had ever anticipated. A visual delight amidst the pain and suffering of a dying people and failing marriage. Will a cure be found for both, before it's too late?
| Naomi Watts | Kitty Fane |
| Edward Norton | Walter Fane |
| Liev Schreiber | Charlie Townsend |
| Toby Jones | Waddington |
| Diana Rigg | Mother Superior |
| Juliet Howland | Dorothy Townsend |
| Anthony Wong Chau-Sang | Colonel Yu |
| Maggie Steed | Mrs. Garstin |
| Lorraine Laurence | Sister Maryse |
| Johnny Lee | Angry Chinese Man |
| Li Feng | Sung Ching |
| Gesang Meiduo | Amah |
| Alan David | Mr. Garstin |
| Lucy Voller | Doris Garstin |
| Ian Rennick | Geoffrey Denison |
| John Curran |
7.60 out of 10 (10592 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Ironic and faintly absurd, yet heart-wrenching all the same
posted on 24 Aug 2009I first saw this movie last summer, and, finding it thoroughly entertaining, have seen it several times since. Though creative, the plot did run a little too fast at times. For example, it was unclear how often Kitty's affair with Charlie lasted (in the book, it was several months). I realize though that it would have made the movie longer and that it was quite long already.Strangely, I have to say that I prefer the movie to the book here. The movie does let us know what is going on between England and China during the 1920's, which is something the book does not do. Also, when direct quotes from the book were placed into the script, they were put into scenes in which they were more appropriate.Despite its tragedy, this movie managed to make me laugh. Kitty finally fell in love with her husband, and then he died? She named her son after him, even though he was likely not the father? Irony like that is not something you see every day, and I couldn't help but find it amusing.Also, you can't help but be awed by the scenery. It is strange, not something you're accustomed to seeing, yet very beautiful. There is one scene towards the end where the sunset is so simple yet majestic that it makes you want to cry.The actors are all compelling and you can't help but feel the way each character does. You will feel sorry for them and at the same time you'll want to shout "you idiot" at the screen. In the end, you'll probably end up liking them all.Devastatingly beautiful scenery, brilliant acting (Naomi Watts is pretty bad at fake crying, but otherwise she was quite good)and a few interesting twists make this movie worth seeing at least once.
Lovely to Look At
posted on 20 Aug 2009Gorgeous cinematography of China, an excellent cast and performances are the stars of "The Painted Veil," a 2006 version of a Somerset Maugham story. The film concerns an unhappily married couple, Kitty and Walter Fane (Naomi Watts and Edward Norton). He's a doctor, and in love with her, but she only married him to get away from her domineering mother. She drifts into an affair with another man (Liev Schreiber). When her husband finds out, he blackmails her into going to a cholera-ridden area, where he plans to help fight the disease. She has no choice - it's either that or have her paramour named in a divorce case.Now totally detesting her, Walter gets her into the area going the toughest, most tortuous route and most probably hopes she gets cholera and dies. She doesn't, but she becomes bored and volunteers to help the nuns, led by the Mother Superior (Diana Rigg). Along the way, she finds out what people think of her husband and grows to admire him.Somerset Maugham is never easy to film. This isn't the kind of movie that goes down well with many types of audiences today - it's slow-moving without a lot of action. However, I liked it. The performances all around are excellent, including that of Toby Waddington, who plays a neighbor, and Schreiber, as the ex-lover. Watts and Norton create believable characters. For me both actors are underrated and prove again that they are capable of astonishing performances.Worth seeing for sure.
Excellent Movie
posted on 14 Aug 2009What an excellent movie - really exceptional. Norton and Watts are so believable and the supporting cast are amazing as well. Sets, scenery, music, and costumes are dead on. Character development and evolution make these characters well rounded and memorable.The story is so realistic that it makes one wonder if it isn't based in fact rather than fiction, and the feelings of the time (hatred for imperialistic foreigners) is documented accurately. The only negative thing I can say is that there was a point when editing needed to be tighter because the movie dragged a bit in defining Kitty's boredom and isolation. The audience got the message much earlier. But this was only a brief irritation because the movie was so fascinating. The movie does deviate from the novel in that the ending has changed somewhat, but few people have probably read this novel and most won't even notice. It's a longer than average movie and will probably play better in Europe than America. But for the thinking crowd, it's an absolute must see.
I love it! I love it! I love it!
posted on 10 Aug 2009I've waited for the release of THE PAINTED VEIL for months. Finally I had the chance to see it. This is one truly unique movie and i loved every minute of it. I love Edward Norton, i love Naomi Watts, i love John Curran. This is the perfect love story. The movie is slow and passioned. Every second i expect something to happen - it's very intriguing - the way the story develops...it's like slow river( it's strange definition, but that's the way I feel about it). and the love story makes you feel dizzy only the way the smell of flowers and trees in springtime makes you. For an eternal romanticist like me the love between Walter and Kitty is the perfect one. I love the fact they fall in love after they get married. I really admire Walter Fane. He is strong and tender, sensitive and considerate. Edward Norton is great actor and he is my favourite actor ever since i saw FIGHT CLUB. I love his movies.
thefilmguru reviews: The Painted Veil
posted on 17 Jul 2009The Painted Veil has it all going for itself. Naomi Watts and Edward Norton leading, two great actors. An interesting theme and issue, Cholera in China in 1920 and a great location to tease beauty from, but none of this is taken to its advantage.Director John Curran shoots this self-named political romance in a way where it's so trying to be unique, that it turns out to be not so. Curran seems to refuse to even attempt at pulling away from the dreary, wooden lifestyle of the early 1900's that is so majorly presented in other films, and therefore throughout the film seems to sort of descend into not even trying to be unique anymore.Having not much earlier experience or success, Curran seems to have jumped at the opportunity of a movie about a politically buckling country, after seeing the Oscar success those types of films have had recently. Namely, The Last King of Scotland and Blood Diamond. In all the excitement however, Curran seems to have forgotten that to have winning political films like them, the films have to be good.But, I shouldn't rant on about John Curran when the obvious major culprit is the screenwriter. Ron Nyswaner tries but fails at creating thought provoking and understated dialogue and story. It's heartbreaking when you can tell he has obviously tried at making it these things when it just turns out to look flimsy and thin under the influence of such a promising cast. Edward Norton strives to get something out of his sketchy and single-mooded character but again, fails, just like the rest of the crew on this film.However, there are moments of genuine flair, but this only occurs in obvious exciting bits, which makes you think the Director only chose to do the film for these sequences. Long half hour dull patches are injected with 1 minute scored sequences of someone dying of cholera and the disgust on Edward Norton's face, and despite these only being the good bits because, finally, there's something interesting to watch, you do feel that there may be a tiny bit of promise for the rest of the film, but guess what…the score stops, Norton stops looking disgusted, and we cut to Naomi Watts, sitting in a chair sighing again.The writer seems to have run out of ink only when he had established 2 plot lines, a novelty guard, and the idea that making the characters British makes them deep in itself.Somehow, however, this film drags these 2 plot lines, the guard and the British accents along with it for the whole 2 and a bit hours, to solidify the fact that Naomi Watts isn't as good as everyone says, that just because movies are about redemption and political issues with foreigners, it doesn't make them good, and that The Painted Veil, overall, is a thin, and boring movie.
If music be the food of love, play on ...
posted on 09 Jul 2009"The Painted Veil" is an instructive example of how music can (literally) be instrumental to a film, and not merely incidental. This comes at a time when film scores sometimes overpower the action and dialog, and songs do not move the plot along but seem tacked on at the end in a bid for an Oscar."The Painted Veil" makes use of Erik Satie's deceptively simple yet hauntingly beautiful "Gnossienne" as a leitmotiv. The melody is deceptively simple because the heroine, Kitty Fane (Naomi Watts), is able to play it on the out-of-tune piano of an orphanage in China. But, at the same time, it is hauntingly beautiful because it has the power to remind Kitty, her husband Walter (Edward Norton), and the audience of the moment they met and he, at least, fell in love. The "Gnossienne" has certainly remained indelibly engraved in my mind, as memorable as Satie's "Gymnopédies".Apart from the music, "The Painted Veil" is a film I was admittedly reluctant to see on the strength of the preview. But I'm glad I finally went. I had expected a romantic-epic saga. Instead, the film tells the tale of a less than romantic relationship that eventually blooms into true, deep, and lasting love. "The Painted Veil" serves as a salutary reminder that, like the music of Satie's "Gnossienne", love need not always be a stirring, sweeping passion but can also be delicate and sweet.
Is a book adaptation
posted on 01 Jul 2009The painted veil refers to life, from a Shelley sonnet. Being a movie adaptation of a book by W. Somerset Maugham, it couldn't have been really bad. And being with Edward Norton and foxy Naomi Watts, it couldn't have had bad acting. I mean... he would have been motivated :)Anyway, this is the type of slow movie that is worth it, at least as romantic movies go. It's the story of an estranged couple finding love in remote China of 1920, during a cholera epidemic. The movie is quite long and may bore people, although I didn't feel bored at all. It presents the shallowness of the British high society of the time, the life of Hong Kong Chinese during the British occupation, the subtle and insidious way in which Catholic orphanages spread their religion, it shows beautiful scenery, but most of all, it shows how you can live by stupid society rules and not see the good things that are right next to you.There is an earlier adaptation of the book with Greta Garbo in 1934, but I don't intend to watch and make the comparison.The film is worth seeing in slow, romantic nights. It is not a romantic comedy, if that's what you are looking for. It's deep and dramatic. I mean, it came from a book... :)
Pretty Maugham remake with Norton at his brittle best
posted on 29 Jun 2009Though W. Somerset Maugham wrote novels and this movie is the third screen adaptation of one of them, his facile pessimism found its greatest expression in the short story form and John Curran's Painted Veil has a short story arc.Maugham characters are often trapped in fatal either/or's, like the young man in The Alien Corn. This story became one segment of a classic English film collection of Maugham tales, Quartet. In this one Harold French directed Dirk Bogarde as George Bland, who, when told he will never be a fine pianist, goes and shoots himself. Real life tends to make more room for compromises -- like becoming a piano teacher, for instance.Maugham was a great chronicler of Brits being devoured by their own imperial outposts. He felt for his colonial wives but he gave them little to look forward to. They were bored and as their husbands turned to drink they turned to adultery. They often made foolish choices and when they did the bad consequences were rarely reversible. Kitty in The Painted Veil (Naomi Watts, taking the role played by Garbo in 1934) goes to what was originally Hong Kong (in the movie it's Shanghai) where she's gone with a husband she agreed thoughtlessly to marry just to get away from her mother and escape being compared to a sister with better marriage offers. In the colonial setting where her microbiologist husband Dr. Thomas Fane (Edward Norton) turns out to be a self-important prig obsessed with his work, she falls heir to the usual colonial boredom. She relieves it in an affair with a more full-bodied and worldly individual, the colonial official Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber). Fane finds out about his wife's affair and punishes her by offering a cruel either/or. Either she will come with him to a remote place in the country where there is a cholera outbreak, or he will divorce her for adultery. It's not much of a choice. In 1925, the risk of cholera wasn't as bad as a public, acrimonious divorce. She goes.Maugham gives his story a pattern not unlike that of Hemingway's famous Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber. In that story, a man who seems a wimp to his wife wins her back by turning out to be brave on a safari in Africa -- and then promptly dies. Fane too displays fine character that wins his wife's love -- then dies. Though their first month or so at the outpost is deadly, Kitty comes to admire Fane when she learns of his own bravery and dedication in combating the local epidemic. She turns serious herself and starts to work in a French orphanage where Diana Rigg is the Mother Superior. Love grows up between Kitty and Thomas, and then Thomas contracts cholera at a yet more remote and more disease-ridden location, and expires with Kitty by his side. When we see Kitty back on a street in London five years later her with her little boy, who may be Walter's or Townsend's, she's become a good woman. Townsand turns up but she declines without a moment's hesitation his suggestion that they get together again while he's in town. This screenplay has softened Maugham's typically more cynical plot. In the book Kitty goes back to Townsend and is seduced by him again.Watts is perfect in sheer blouses and under fancy umbrellas and handles a range of emotions with her usual warmth and conviction. Of course lacking the unearthly beauty of an icon like Garbo, she cannot embody the frustrated, tragic woman with the same perfection. She's a better actress, but what does acting matter when your competition is Garbo? Norton is excellent here in a role that fits his own brittle manner as well as the natty Edwardian ensembles fit his slimmed-down body. He fades into his character even more convincingly than in his other starring role this year as the remote and mysterious Eisenheim in Neil Berger's The Illusionist. Norton is a brilliantly self-conscious actor, like Kevin Spacey but without Spacey's fearful presence. Norton seems remote, but give him the right role and he soars. Infamous' Toby Jones is convincing as Waddington, the local official who's gone native. He has the appropriate simpatico but burnt-out quality. The authenticity of the crowd scenes was obviously aided by the presence of Chinese co-producers.John Curran's film, with a neatly delineated screenplay by Ron Nyswanner (Mrs. Soffel, Gross Anatomy, Philadelphia), is an opportunity for audiences to have a romantic Masterpiece Theater sort of experience in a beautiful exotic setting, with nice looking Twenties costumes, party scenes, period Chinese crowds, rickshaws and sedan chairs and lovely hills and greenery, even a big delicate water wheel that appears built out of dark matchsticks. But Maugham's colonial stories aren't really about fine scenery. They're about prickly heat and disillusion, and a much more effective version of one is Wyler's 1940 The Letter, with Bette Davis, or the aforementioned Quartet (1949) or the equally brilliant British filmed story collection, Encore (1951), where the settings don't threaten to overwhelm the emotions as much as in this pretty production.
Wow! I Didn't Know They Still Made Films This Good
posted on 25 Jun 2009I saw this film well reviewed here, and I could not have been more pleased in my viewing of it. Wow! What a great film! It is a slow and steadily paced human and interpersonal drama. These are very real and human characters and watching the dynamics between them unfold as the plot moves back and forth is like watching a flower unfold. This is a beautiful and haunting film. If you let yourself go along for the journey you will find yourself caught up in the lives and experiences of these characters and the drama will get inside you and under your skin.Most of Edward Norton's films (e.g., American X) are just too violent for my taste. I was very moved and pleased to be able to enjoy his famously fine acting in this film. The rest of the cast is just superb. I knew I was in for a treat as I watched Liev Schreiber, Diana Rigg, and Toby Jones appear on the screen.The cinematography of the Chinese landscape is stunning. Definitely a film worth seeing on the large screen before it goes to the small screen.I didn't know they still made films this rich and good.
Flawless acting covers up already seen story
posted on 23 Jun 2009When you watch 'The Painted Veil' you just see how amazingly great it is acted, i mean it's definitely the biggest advantage of this whole film. Story is quite usual and already seen dozen times, but performances from Naomi Watts and Edward Norton turn this just above-average story of love and hate into very great story of love and hate.Quite frankly i stopped following the story just about the point when it turned out very predictable and just payed attention to acting, and it proved to be good choice, cause there are no surprises at the end of the movie or anything. I mean i wasn't expecting an "edge of your seat" kind of story, but it could have been done better, i understand that it's a remake and i just think some details should have been corrected and interpreted better.This movie i recommend for absolutely everyone, cause i am sure everybody is gonna find something likable in it, although some might be disappointed with the lack of chemistry between Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, but then again they did hate each other for 2/3 of the movie right?8/10
Remake of Garbo Classic
posted on 15 Jun 2009Naomi Watts is every bit as good as Garbo was in the 1934 version, and Ed Norton is outstanding. Great supporting cast as well - Diana Rigg is almost unrecognizable as a Mother Superior, and Liev Schreiber is, as always, terrific as a slimy lowlife. Based on one of Somerset Maugham's best stories, this is a movie that will satisfy anyone looking for an old-fashioned, romantic drama about love lost and love earned. The social quandary of British women after the first World War, which created a generation of unwilling spinsters, is taken as seriously by the filmmakers as the emergence of a new China standing up to its Colonial oppressors. Watts' character's journey from spoiled, selfish Daddy's girl in 1920's fun-loving London to a mature woman in a deprived, cholera-infested third-world country is harrowing.
A so-so melodrama, partially redeemed by strong performances
posted on 13 Jun 2009I don't know if it's just my personal taste - period melodramas are not among my favorite genres - but I found the movie to be quite boring. The only reason I went to see it is because I am a die-hard Edward Norton fan, and I watch all of his movies.The first half hour or so I thought was laughable. The acting and the dialogue were so melodramatic that at points it felt like a soap opera. The scenes were well structured - they contained real drama and not just small talk, like in a lot of movies nowadays ("Little Children" for example). Each character had an objective, and a set of actions to match. But the dialogue itself was horrible - a lot of the time they were saying out loud what should have been their subtext. That's the first half an hour.After that, it gets significantly better, and I do believe that if you're the type of person who enjoys such movies (like "The English Patient" or "Memoirs of a Geisha" for example) you will be entertained and maybe moved. I wasn't.The ingredients are all there: stunning cinematography, a beautiful soundtrack, three-dimensional characters, and very strong performances by both Norton and Watts. I did get a kick out of Norton's coldness and apathy towards Watts, and it even got a few laughs out of me. They were both a pleasure to watch, especially during scenes where not everything was said out-loud, and you could feel the tension under the surface. It's the story that was the problem - I just wasn't engaged by it, and the whole thing seemed to move too slowly.All in all a decent effort, but not an entirely successful one. 6 out of 10.
Great Love Story
posted on 07 Jun 2009I am a sucker for love stories. I am a special sucker when love happens between 2 people that don't seem to be able to stand one another. Isn't that essentially what happens in Pride and Prejudice? In The Painted Veil, Kitty (Naomi Watts), a beautiful, vivacious girl from a moderately wealthy family agrees to marry Walter (Edward Norton), a serious doctor. You couldn't find a seemingly more mismatched pair. Kitty likes to play games, especially tennis and cards. She likes dances and the theater. Walter has a scientific, rational mind, and shows little interest in emotion or passion or any kind. He is a bacteriologist (he informs Kitty) and is leaving for Shanghai the next day. Of course, we know it's always those quiet ones . . .Walter believes he can make Kitty happy in the typical way men think they can. Give them pretty things and an occasional fun night out, and they'll be happy. A fun girl like Kitty wants companionship, something the doctor lacks experience in. She might have allowed him to make her happy if he wasn't such a bore. Even I found this doctor boring, and I am an Edward Norton fan. Divorce was not an option in those days, so she begins an affair with the more suave politician (Liev Schreiber).When Walter discovers the infidelity, he gives Kitty and ultimatum: come with him to an agricultural town that is suffering from a cholera epidemic or he will divorce her in a public humiliating fashion. Option 2 is no option for Kitty. She would return to her parent's house ashamed with no hopes of escape. She chooses to follow Walter although she realizes she'll probably die from cholera. What Walter hopes to accomplish by doing this is unclear. Maybe he's trying to punish Kitty or himself. Maybe he couldn't think of going alone no matter how despicable the company might be. These two treat each other with a casual indifference one reserves for small garden worms.Whatever his intent, Kitty is utterly miserable in her new home, a barren looking landscape with no companionship. Stuck at home with nothing to do, she chooses to put her hands to work in the same hospital her husband labors each day. And so they begin to notice things about one another. He is good with babies. She plays beautiful music that makes the orphans smile. He is working hard to save people's lives. She is a girl with no fear of death.And they finally love for the same reason that Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy finally do: they realize the inherent goodness and bravery in the other person and cling to it like a lifeboat. When you live through a tragic situation, you see what a person is really made of.The foggy, haunting setting in agrarian China is an appropriate backdrop for this love story. The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer echoes the lush landscape.
A most transporting film.
posted on 05 Jun 2009I think is the tone of the film –– and by that I mean everything from the cinematography to the dialogue the music and, most of all, the nuanced performances –– which, because it is so consistent and so consistently sublime renders the film far apart from the ordinary. I was interested to see that Naomi Watts and Edward Norton produced this film. No matter which of them (or, for that matter, any one of the film's fine cast) is on the screen, we are fully involved: they invite us into their story, they invite us to care. Even if one were to strip away the performances and the story there is still the sheer beauty of the Chinese countryside, filmed to perfection.Just go, and see for yourself.
Excellent movie both well filmed and brilliantly acted.
posted on 01 Jun 2009This is an excellent, well filmed and brilliantly acted movie. Edward Norton and Naomi Watts are two very strong actors who are superb in the film. It manages to mix the love story with real life very well. Beautiful location which was well photographed and directed perfectly. An atmospheric drama which was very moving and seemed to really take you in as if you were there. I got totally carried away with the characters and the plight in which they find themselves. Edward Norton as usual playing the perfect role and carrying it off expertly. The story line is not in the least predictable and keeps you engrossed until the end.
Superb performance but that alone cant save a movie
posted on 20 May 2009All this movie is Good at is the performance sector. Noami Watts, who is definitely one of the most underrated actress, gives one of the strongest performances of 2006. She is as good as the Oscar nominated actresses, but it's the Role yet again that doesnot get her in the top5 slot. This isn't her loss but her Role's.Anyways Noami Watts is Stunningly Brilliant. And her depiction of a woman stuck between a weird husband and her boring life is completely Convincing. I hope Watts comes up with a Stronger role in the coming years and does win the trophy.Edward Nortan the other star of the movie also gives a strong performance. He's perfect as the Obsessed Angry Husband. After his movies like "down in the valley", "illusionist" I hope he's here to stay.After all that said the bad part of the movie is the screenplay. It's totally boring and not holding any interest what-so-ever. The movie id start of well and did seem to be a Good movie. But as the time elongated from an hour to hours without anything happening in the story left me completely Bored.The direction is pretty good and so is the cinematography. But I don't think the music of this movie was good enough to win the golden globes.Nonetheless a Perfectly Acted movie. But not a Good enough movie to hold anyone's interest………5/10
Love (and irrigation) in the Time of Cholera
posted on 12 May 2009Very beautiful scenery of China. Interesting and educational about the world of the 1920s -- British marriages, Catholic orphanages, Chinese Nationalists and Warlords.Good for Edward Norton and Naomi Watts for developing their own material. Edward is lean as a whippet here and Naomi is good -- but doesn't have the glam appeal of Greta Garbo (who starred in the 1934 original).Speaking of glam appeal, the man next to me murmured "Can you imagine that Mother Superior in thigh high black boots?" Ummm, not really. Diana Rigg is wonderful as the wise no-nonsense head nun -- but with no makeup at all and a baggy habit she does not resemble the sexy young thing in a catsuit in the 1960s "The Avengers".The film builds to a revelation (unveiling?) of love which gives you a warm glow.
The People's Republic Of China Popularizes The Kuomintang
posted on 28 Apr 2009The Painted Veil takes place in Kuomintang China during the early twenties. The interesting thing about this film is that it was done in China and it popularizes the government that the Chinese Communists over threw in 1949. More and more China is surely getting away from the Marxist ideology of Mao Tse-tung.Edward Norton and Naomi Watts are a British couple in China during the Twenties occupying one of several areas carved out by foreign powers. He's a doctor and deep in his work. The bored Naomi gets into an affair with Liev Schreiber and she's caught by her husband Norton.Soon afterward Doctor Norton is assigned to a remote area where cholera is raging. Watts accompanies him and is treated coldly, but the work he does and the loneliness of the place brings them together.The Kuomintang was the name of a political party founded by Sun Yat-sen and they had the goal of eventually expelling foreigners. China for the Chinese as it should have been. China was hardly a unified country at that time, in fact Norton and the Kuomintang head in the area Anthony Wong Sang Chau have to deal with a local warlord of which there were many. You can see his kind portrayed in such films back in the studio era as the Shanghai Express and The General Died at Dawn.After Sun Yat-Sen died in 1925 the Kuomintang party and government was taken over by Chiang Kai-shek. By that time the Chinese Communist party had been founded and besides Marxism, the Chinese Communists portrayed the Kuomintang as not going far enough in getting rid of foreign spheres of influence. So for the current Chinese government to portray the Kuomintang favorably is really quite a statement.One of the key scenes is Anthony Wong Sang Chau telling Ed Norton that while he appreciates the medical assistance it doesn't necessarily have to be with westerns guns backing it up. There aren't in fact too many western guns around in this remote region. Other noteworthy performances are that of Toby Jones as a British agent and Diana Rigg as the Mother Superior of a convent in the area who aid Norton in fighting the cholera. There were a lot of good and bad missionaries in China, Rigg is showed as one of the very best.W. Somerset Maugham wrote the novel on which the film is based. The Painted Veil is helped by the actual location cinematography in China and the landmark cooperation of the Chinese government in bringing this touching story to the screen.
Norton and Watts try but do not emulate source material
posted on 24 Apr 2009Noble stab at the stoic period romance did not seem to break through to any significant emotional territory despite laborious direction and tuned performances. In bringing forth W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 dramatic story, which deals with a struggling British couple's minor adventures throughout a remote, cholera-ridden Chinese village, the results play more like a stilted adaptation then a genuine and relevant piece of fiction.With pure intent, everyone on board tries to do what they can to breathe life into the subsiding sentiment, usually getting washed away in the melodramatic nuance of it all. While not as dull as a Merchant-Ivory collaboration at it's uninvolved worst, The Painted Veil rarely grabs spectators for what should have been a more engaging story. At times it feels that all this subtle posturing is merely there to mask an emotional void that envelops the entire production. There are grand moments to be found, but those moments lie few and far between a mediocre morality tale amongst overvalued scenery.
A jewel of a film
posted on 26 Aug 2009This is a jewel of a movie with sparkles from every facet: a compelling narrative, first-class acting, a fine score, and superb photography. The core of the work is the 1925 novel by Somerset Maugham which draws on his experiences as a medical student and partner in a troubled marriage. It is set in China in the 1920s and focuses on a visit to a cholera epidemic by intense bacteriologist Walter Fane (American Edward Norton) and his new wife Kitty the fey socialite (British-born, Australian-raised Naomi Watts).The novel has been filmed twice before in 1934 and in 1957. This version has the inestimable advantage of being shot in China itself in Beijing, Shanghai and the Guangxi region (all of which I have visited) which enables New Zealand cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh to create some stunning visuals. Its leading actors affect acceptable British accents and give real power and depth to the roles, while the strong supporting cast includes Liev Schreiber as Kitty's lover (Screiber and Watts are a couple in real life) and the veteran Diana Rigg as a mother superior.