Produced by Jonathan English, Alan Greenspan, Howard Himelstein. Cast: Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Campbell-Moore, Mark Umbers, Milena Vukotic, Diana Hardcastle Oscar Wilde’s witty play Lady Windermere’s Fan is a delightful epigrammic satire on the rigid English moralism of the 1890s and while A Good Woman is based on the plot and contains much of Wilde’s coruscating dialogue, writer Howard Himelstein has updated it to the 1930s, placed the story abroad on the fashionable Amalfi coast of Italy and made the main characters American. In addition, much of the moralising tone is softened without lessening the impact of the satire and humour. The satirical harpooning of ‘gossip’ remains a feature of both. The film opens with a small group of well-groomed society women gossiping over tea in a New York tea-room, discussing how they found out about their husbands’ infidelity – a hairpin in the wardrobe, a strange hair in the bed. Pointedly they look at the scandalous Mrs Erlynne (Helen Hunt) at a nearby table whose lines of credit on the accounts of several of the gossipy women’s husbands, are politely but firmly declined by the waiter who served her. Shortly afterwards, she’s targeting her next mark: Robert Windermere (Mark Umbers), vacationing on the Italian Riviera with his new, young wife, Meg (Scarlett Johansson). A beautiful and bubbly young bride preparing for her 21st birthday party, she meets Mrs Erlynne in a dress boutique, unaware that her husband has been paying both large sums of money and attention to the seductive older woman. The scene establishes her as unsophisticated, too modest to wear in public the revealing dress she tries on, despite Mrs Erlynne’s warm compliments. Unlike Wilde’s original Lady Windermere, she’s not a rigid, Puritanical moralist, simply naïve and very much in love. Mrs Erlynne, however, is painted as far more a survivor, an audacious parasite with shameless morals, than the original. What is true to the plot of Wilde’s play is the central secret, that Mrs Erlynne is blackmailing Robert with the information that she is Meg’s birth mother, something Robert wants to protect the idealistic Meg from knowing. Also true to Wilde’s original is the device on which the plot turns and is resolved. Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell-Moore), a British aristocrat who has fallen for Meg, engineers that she discovers, via her husband’s chequebook, the amounts Robert has been paying Mrs Erlynne. Naturally Meg is devastated. Feeling betrayed and humiliated, she decides she will take Lord Darlington up on his offer to take her away on his yacht. Mrs Erlynne is just in time to save her from disgrace, at great personal cost to herself. The climactic scene is on Lord Darlington’s yacht, where Meg’s fan, a birthday present from Robert, is found. Mrs Erlynne allows all the gentlemen present to think it was she, and not the speedily departed Meg, who was waiting for Lord Darlington. In protecting Meg’s reputation, she kills her own chances of marrying besotted millionaire Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson) in what is portrayed as her one decent maternal act. Meg wastes no time in telling Tuppy all, in order to restore his good opinion of Mrs Erlynne, and there’s a happy ending. Meg’s own opinion of Mrs Erlynne makes of her single redeeming feature the ironical title of the film. The adaptation is skilful and believable, and all Wilde’s best epigrams are delivered appropriately including “I can resist everything except temptation,” and (a cynic is) “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”, spoken by Lord Darlington. Stephen Campbell-Moore’s Lord Darlington is an agreeably effete rogue while Mark Umbers’ Robert Windermere is a little too cardboard-like. Scarlett Johansson and Helen Hunt shine brilliantly in comparison and contrast each other well, the mother-daughter relationship deftly portrayed. There's just a suggestion that Helen Hunt is not quite as comfortable in this period role as Johansson or Tom Wilkinson who quietly inhabits his role as Tuppy with the most aplomb. Costumes are fabulous, the gorgeous Italian Riviera magnificent, and the music delightful. The point of the original play is equally well made – gossip and public assumption of people’s characters are unreliable sources of good judgement. All in all: amusing, witty and well-done. © Avril Carruthers 29th Jun 2005
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