Easy Virtue

Easy Virtue, directed by Stephan Elliott and adapted from a play by Noel Coward, is one of those fizzy cinematic concoctions about the Brits between the wars that seem to crowd the art-houses every year. There are a lot of period songs and vintage cars, references to Picasso, Lady Chatterley's Lover, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, lots of cigarette smoking, and an abundance of withering witticisms. There's also the obligatory huge manor home, which begs the question--do the owners of these English estates make most of their money by renting them out to film companies for movies like these? There sure does seem to be plenty of them.

I mostly liked Easy Virtue, which is about seventy-five percent delightful and twenty-five percent head-scratching. I think most of the pleasure comes from Coward's original script, which of course has some very droll dialogue. The plot concerns the Whitaker family on one of those baronial estates. The mother, Kristin Scott Thomas, is Gorgon-like, trying to maintain the prestige and dignity of her forebears, while her husband, Colin Firth, has never been the same since the Great War and takes to lounging about the house, unshaven, with sardonic witticisms at the ready. They have two daughters, one of whom gloomily awaits a beau who will never arrive, and the other a chipmunk type who eyes the young man from the neighboring estate.

There is also a son, Ben Barnes, who has been gallivanting in France. He turns everything upside-down by coming home arm in arm with a new bride, Jessica Biel. To Thomas' horror, she's not only American, she's a race-car driver. Firth likes her right away, but over the course of the film Thomas and Biel will lock horns over Barnes and the future of the family.

Elliott directs with manic energy, and the film is always bubbling with humor. I especially liked the business involving a jaded butler, Kris Marshall, particularly in a scene in which Biel accidentally kills Thomas' beloved chihuahua. But there are is also some keen weirdness. In a scene in which Barnes takes a spin on a new motorized tractor, the song on the soundtrack seems familiar. Yes, I'm hearing correctly, it's the 1970's hit Car Wash, albeit done with a twenties' jazz sound. Most of the soundtrack has songs from the period, a lot of them by Coward (Mad About the Boy, Mad Dogs and Englishmen) but the song over the closing credits is by Billy Ocean.

Biel looks great and is just about convincing as the brash heroine. We can only be glad that Scarlett Johansson didn't get the role, since she's been playing a lot of roles like this lately. Firth has the fun role with most of the good lines, and he knocks them out of the park.

An interesting historical note: Easy Virtue was made into a film before, a silent film in 1928 (an interesting choice for a play by Coward). It was directed by none other than a very young Alfred Hitchcock.