Easy Virtue (2008) – on rental. After two fantasy, one disaster, and one ponderous conspiracy thriller film in about a week, I was glad for a change of pace when a comedic-drama arrived by way of rental.
I haven’t heard of this film based off a play by the same name before, but included it in my rental queue because it had two British acting greats in it: Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas, and no doubt as bonus or maybe main attraction for other audiences, American sex bomb and actress Jessica Biel has a leading role in it too.
The story is set in a post World-War 1 1920s England, with Biel playing Larita, an unconventional American racecar driver and widow, marrying a young English gentlemen John Whittaker whose family owns an estate and stately manor. The family is as dysfunctional as you get them though: there’s the icy-cold mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) who sees Larita as a gold digger – at one point she calls Larita a person of ‘Easy Virtue’ and hence the film and play’s title – and spelling ruin for the traditionalist family, an aloof father (Colin Firth) who served in the war as an officer and was the only person in the village to survive the blood shed, and two semi-airbrained sisters. Much of the comedy lies in Larita trying her level best to fit in but in vain, until the obvious mismatch and high tension leads to standoffs between her and the Whittaker family.
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Easy Virtue doesn’t have an especially new premise, since stories like these – essentially about fishes out of the water – have been seen everywhere in entertainment. You get a lot of the usual cultural references about the Brits and the Yanks for instance, and the whole notion that women in the 1920s were expected to only occupy certain rungs of the social ladder. I’m reminded especially of another film we’d just recently rewatched: Mona Lisa Smile, and it was of similar premise. Apart from a minor twist in the last scene of the film, there’s little surprising about how the story resolves itself at its end.
What works well though is the wit and care given to the dialog, the great acting all round even if the play / film leans on a very sympathetic portrayal of Larita, and relentlessly fast pacing of the film. There’re so many precious gems of great lines everywhere that’d elicit laughs: including one about how the English always fake smiles. Firth and Thomas have also been an onscreen couple before in The English Patient, and the couple of scenes where they play off each other are delightful to watch even if their marital relationship is only a sub and not main plot of the story.
And the film is pretty and almost even too-compact at a short length of 90 minutes. Scenes move quickly and rarely linger beyond what’s needed to communicate the bare minimum to film audiences. Lastly, there’s an amazing Tango dance number between Firth and Biel (picture below) that’s reminiscent of the similar number Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis did in True Lies 14 years ago. Absolutely stunning footwork and choreography.
So, like The Spiderwick Chronicles, I found Easy Virtue to be yet another pleasant dinner-time accompaniment, and it was short enough for the both of us to finish watching it without interruption for Hannah’s evening feeds.:)
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