The Painted Veil
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Directed by: John Curran
Starring:
Edward Norton - Walter Fane
Naomi Watts - Kitty Fane
Liev Schreiber - Charlie Townsend
Toby Jones - Waddington
Part-period piece, part-melodrama, and total-Oscar bait, The Painted Veil is a competent film but brings nothing fresh or unique to the proceedings.
The story follows the fickle, spoiled Kitty (Naomi Watts) who marries Walter (Edward Norton), a stoic bacteriologist. He marries her because she’s enchanting (by virtue of being played by Naomi Watts) and hopes that she’ll grow to love him. She marries him because she wants to get away from her mother. But since opposites don’t really attract, Kitty ends up having an affair with Charlie (Liev Schreiber) and once discovered, Walter offers her choice: divorce of coming along to a small Chinese village to fight a cholera epidemic. Now between Dr. Phil and cholera, I’d choose cholera, but for Kitty, she decides that rather than bear the disgrace of divorce, she’ll brave cholera.
The film deserves credit for remaining faithful to its time period. For example, we know Kitty is a bit of a free-spirit because she likes to have sex with the lights on. Kinky! Unfortunately, the dedication to the setting never manages to translate into making the world feel real or compelling. The film always feels like it’s doing the bare minimum required by the story. No character feels flat or ignored but neither does anyone come alive and make the story feel real. Even the over-arching themes only come down to Kitty’s growth as a person. The film, for whatever reason, does not reach for the big love between the leads or the big conflict of 1920s rural China.
The Painted Veil is just melodrama at its most mediocre.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
12.7.06