Easy Virtue (***1/4)

You might have missed the first adaptation of Easy Virtue, a play by the late Noel Coward. Back in 1928 it wasn’t a period piece, as it is now. It’s about a hundred years later than all of those Jane Austen adaptations, but this is the same kind of movie, aimed to appeal to the sort who like listening to well-crafted dialogue spoken by classy actors, watching the English gentry cope with their social inferiors (and money troubles), and imagining themselves living in impossibly large country estates. In this context, any American is a social inferior, and that is the predicament that the heroine (Jessica Biel)—a city girl and race-car driver, of all things—finds herself in when she marries. Her boyish husband’s mother (Kristin Scott Thomas, in another fine role) is most dismissive, while her father-in-law, a rakish yet shell-shocked veteran (Colin Firth) is most sympathetic.

Director Stephan Elliott was last seen making the silly Ashley Judd-as-sympathetic-serial-killer drama Eye of the Beholder, but fares better outside Hollywood. He begins with a great sight gag, in which a sister’s dropped telescope falls smoothly into the arms of her father, who casually hands it off to his wife, who spies her son now arriving. Only a few scenes are that clever, but Elliot brings the characters into sharper focus as the plot winds forward, with a bit of suspense as to whether the American will stay with her husband in the country, move with him to London, or lost him to a romantic rival.

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viewed 6/25/09 at Ritz 5; reviewed 7/6/09

Brideshead Revisited (***)

Set vaguely in the period between the world wars, this adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel not only tackles the usual British period drama themes of class, wealth, and nostalgia, but religion too. Successfully working these into a two-hour feature must have been a daunting task, considering that they provided enough material for the acclaimed 1981 BBC miniseries, which ran eleven hours.

Even as pared down, director Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane) has kept the major plot points. Callow Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and fey, drunk, wealthy Sebastian (Ben Whishaw) meet cute at Oxford, and soon Charles finds himself involved with the entire clan, including sister Julia, a self-proclaimed hedonist, and their prim mother (Emma Thompson). Whishaw seems diffident, not attractive as he is apparently supposed to be, but the other performances are very good. There is too much here; though it’s never confusing in terms of plot, the switch in thematic focus can be jarring. Ryder transitions from being the audience surrogate to the ultimate subject of the piece, and Catholicism, touched on earlier, comes to the fore in a surprising way.

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viewed 8/1/08 at Ritz 5

The Spiderwick Chronicles (***)

This fantasy/family film crams a five-volume series of novels into an hour and a half movie that’s coherent and satisfying. Twin nine-year-old brothers and their teen sister have moved into a remote family estate with their mother (Mary-Louise Parker). English Freddie Highmore, employing two perfect American accents, plays both the mischievous Jared, who first discovers the hidden creatures in and around the house, and the placid, brainy Simon.

The story concerns these creatures, who range from tiny fairies to a giant griffin, but most concerns the efforts of the evil ogre and his assisting goblins to acquire a book that is in the house. Woven through this is Jared’s resentment at his mother for moving away from his old home and his father. There isn’t time for these themes to be explored in depth, or even to learn much about all of the different creatures that are introduced. It’s too small of a film to seem like a classic of the chidren’s fantasy. I didn’t feel pulled into another world, as with Wizard of Oz, or Chronicles of Narnia. But I did stay interested despite some familiar elements, and the movie will likely please kids old enough not to be scared of the gruesome, shape-shifting villain.

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viewed and reviewed 2/16/08