Indeed, had it not been for such an incidental distinction, it seems decidedly
unlikely that one would ever have had to sit though this tiresome update.
| Title | Easy Virtue | NS |
| Director | Stephan Elliot | |
| Starring | Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes, Kristin Scott Thomas | |
| Running Time | 93 minutes |
Easy Virtue was always a minor play by a relatively minor playwright. Posterity, however, seems to have had other plans. She decided to grant Noël Coward’s 1924 comedy of manners momentary relaunch when Hitchcock filmed it in 1928.
Indeed, had it not been for such an incidental distinction, it seems decidedly
unlikely that one would ever have had to sit though this tiresome update. Nevertheless, director Stephan Elliott felt compelled to dust off a rightfully dusty play and, along with co-adaptor Sheridan Jobbins, has attempted to polish
it up to a bearable degree. Lipstick on a pig, I’m afraid.
Set in the twenties, the film charts the aftermath of an impetuous Riviera elopement between young English aristocrat
John Whittaker (Ben Barnes), and the glamorous American widow Larita (Jessica Biel).
As the bride is presented to unsuspecting
in-laws, the film’s central culture
clash immediately rears its brow. The fresh decadence of the Jazz Age is transplanted into the typically constricting
dramatic format of the English manor estate.
Kristen Scott Thomas (seen recently in the impressive I’ve Loved You So Long) features as the refined mother-in-law, who engages in a resentful battle of wits with the interloping bride.
Acting as a foil between the two, Colin Firth plays Scott Thomas’ husband – an amiably disenchanted WWI veteran furnished
with a neat back-story to qualify his uncouth wanderings and cynicism.
The central contrast of temperament
is, however, an almost exclusively laboured affair. Only frivolous distinctions
of disposition are ever touched upon. “Do you have to be so loud?” inquires
Barnes’ character of his new wife; “Of course I do; I’m American.”
Perhaps inevitably, Elliott’s film is little more than a feeble patchwork of cultural stereotype.Yet in spite of being
constructed on cliché, there is also something unremittingly incongruous present in Easy Virtue.
The soundtrack initially opens with a jazzy period piece and is often complemented
by Cole Porter material throughout.
As the film progresses, however, this tone is steadily overhauled by crass re-recordings of absurd songs such as “Car wash” and “Sex Bomb”.
The spectre of Hollywood is ever-present, and a true sense of time and place is never conjured competently.
What sets out to be both a comedy of manners and a social statement ultimately
fails on all levels.
Easy Virtue is relentlessly dull; warmth and wit are in total abeyance. Every so often, Colin Firth is afforded a charming line — on presenting Biel with her lodgings: “My wife would like you to rest in peace.” — but for an adaptation of a chamber comedy supposedly in the line of Wilde, there is a surprising emphasis
placed on dreary visual humour and a flatly unjustifiable lack of any real sentiment.
Let’s hope posterity learns from her mistakes. Conor Leahy
