> Easy Virtue
Director: Stephan Elliot
Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin Firth, Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes, Kimberley Nixon, Katherine Parkinson, Kris Marshall
Rating: PG
3 stars (out of 5)
Review by Christine Powley
Australian director Stephan Elliot was an overnight success with The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert but has not reached those giddy heights again.
Why he would want to adapt a play written by Noel Coward in 1924 is hard to fathom.
Easy Virtue (Rialto) tells the tragic comedy of a minor British aristocrat's unsuitable marriage to a slightly older American woman.
When John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) returns to the ancestral pile with his new wife Larita (Jessica Biel), it is a scandal.
John was supposed to marry the girl from the castle next door and his mother, Veronica (Kristin Scott Thomas), is soon intent on pulling off the double feat of keeping John home where he belongs while sending his wife packing.
Larita is no walkover and she has an ally in her father-in-law, Jim (Colin Firth).
Although Veronica is supposed to be a dragon, Scott Thomas is too canny an actress for us not to end up sympathising with her point of view.
The dashing young lovers are just too placid to buy into.
Easy Virtue only gains cohesion near the end when Jim summons the energy to confide what has alienated him from his family and community.
Cue drum roll, it was the war you know.
Another director could have made more of this, but Elliot's main motivation seems to be to bring farce back into fashion and, as we all know, that ship sailed long ago.
Best thing: Even when this movie is playing at being a silly little country-house farce, this group of actors knows how entertain.
Worst thing: This would have been a better film if it had been a little more serious sooner.
See it with: A soft spot for decaying country piles.
