Expensive Thrills
from the February 2006 INsite Magazine
When a movie bills itself as a “romantic comedy” you usually know what you’re getting. Jennifer Lopez has a dream. Matthew McConaughey falls in love with himself. John Cusack finally pours his heart out to Renee Zelwiger. Sarah Jessica Parker beats her fear of commitment. Barbara Streisand accepts her shortcomings and cries into a wedding cake.
If it is by this (somewhat biased) definition that you choose to miss A Good Woman, you will not be saving yourself from another such Big Fat Greek embarrassment, you will in fact be missing a good movie.
That’s right. A Good Woman is a romantic comedy. And it’s a good movie. I’ll work up to getting all of that into one sentence eventually.
The film is based on Oscar Wilde’s stageplay, “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” which explains its genre-defying coherence. The story follows the gossip and deception set off by the arrival of Mrs. Erlynne (Helen Hunt) to the Italian Riviera in 1930. Ultimately, Mrs. Erlynne’s arrival tests the marriage of Robert Windermere (Mark Umbers) and his wife of one year, Meg (Scarlet Johansson). So there is romance. And some comedy. But for now, we’ll just call the movie an adaptation because it is the story’s adept writing that makes it worth watching.
The real fun in this film is found in its witty, layered style of dialogue. If you enjoy Shakespeare, Casablanca, or flying first class (I imagine the dialogue up there must be fantastic) then you’ll take pleasure in the many sincerely delivered absurdities that comprise this film’s lighter side. A charming suitor pleads with Meg to receive his gift by threatening, “Take the bracelet before I die and ruin your terrace.” An obsessive gossiper is asked why she can’t mind her own business and explains, “My own business bores me.”
But the characters come off as anything but silly. Audiences waiting for that raucous moment when Hugh Grant drops a wedding cake into the grandmother’s bosom won’t have much to laugh about. Director Mike Barker (Best Laid Plans, To Kill A King) has his actors play it straight, which for a patient audience, pays off well.
The first act of the film does move rather slowly. And I can’t remember ever seeing another feature film in the theater in which I had to strain to see things. Literally, the film was dark for almost every scene shot indoors. It felt like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on a cloudy day. Heavy, dark, and overwhelmingly cluttered with ornaments old and precious.
Then again, Mrs. Gardner would have traveled in such circles as Mrs. Erlynne’s and Robert Windermere’s. Perhaps the choice was made deliberately to create the most accurate natural lighting for the period. This film was an international production, and perhaps its look simply speaks to the American affinity for eye-candy. There are no wide, sweeping shots of the Italian Riviera, as one might expect. There are no chase scenes.
In almost every way, this film aspires to authenticity before audience accommodation. Perhaps this explains Helen Hunt in the role of seductress. Again, with patience Hunt makes sense in this role, but even allowing for seven decades difference in taste, she’s a tough sell as a seductress. Then again, it is these little discomforts that are what make a period piece interesting to watch.
Ultimately what saves this film from the dreariness of upper-class drama is that the characters have unapologetic charisma. Lord Darlington pronounces his disdain for relationships while overtly attempting to seduce his friend’s wife. Contessa Lucchino enjoys an opera with her binoculars trained on the audience. The elderly Tuppy proposes marriage offering his bride hope that he may die on a golf course and leave her a very rich young woman. When these characters choose a vice, they commit to it. And it’s endearing.
Such sincere impertinence drives the story to the edge of a precipice, where it teeters for almost the entire second half of the film, forgiving the slow buildup. Barker manages this tension adeptly, revealing only enough at a time to keep things interesting.
In the end we can forgive this film its lessons; that forgiveness can be the most beautiful of gifts, gossip is a powerful force, and old, rich men are the silliest of all people.
Plenty of films have surprising twists and absurd turns, but what makes this story feel right is its sincerity. Its motivations are simple. Simply put, A Good Woman is about the important things. Not the things that are important to you and me but we always seem to forget in that barf-inducing Hollywood way, but the things that are important to each character. And so, like its characters, it is authenticity that redeems this film and forgives it its imperfections.