A Good Woman Review

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home > arts&culture > A Good Woman Review

February 6, 2006 1:59 PM
by [email]

Does money corrupt love? Are looks deceiving? Is flattery a sin? Set on the picturesque Amalfi coast of Italy and inspired by Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” “A Good Women” is an intermittently charming film overflowing with so many moral anecdotes my pen couldn’t keep up.

“I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman when he tells her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean” young Meg Windermere (Scarlett Johanssen) tells her husband’s flirtatious friend, Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore). But women aren’t the only fools in 1930’s high society. Miles away in New York City, Ms. Erlynne (Helen Hunt) bewitches married men with the integrity of a con artist, often walking away with their money and their hearts.

Finally ostracized from the glittery Manhattan scene, Ms. Erlynne sails to Amalfi, where she meets and possibly seduces Meg’s picture perfect husband (Mark Umbers). Predictably, rumors fly, threatening to drive Meg into Darlington’s mischievous arms.

The pace of “A Good Woman” is swift and breezy, but director Mike Barker errs in casting Hunt. Wearing a wig that could compete with Anne Hathaway’s “Brokeback Mountain” hairdo for least flattering of the decade, the usually-brilliant actress looks less like a gifted seductress and more like a woman wandering through the wrong era, hitting on a kid young enough to be her son.

Johannsen fares only slightly better. Maybe I have too many fond memories of “Manny and Lo,” but the actress, so convincing in “Matchpoint,” looks like she’s playing dress up here. The goal might be to get as far away from Nola Rice as possible; in any case, Meg is so naïve and upstanding that her rash move in the film’s third act is hard to buy. Can a woman be too good? (And by good I mean goody-two-shoes, not enticing.) Can a film?

Barker (who is set to direct the very different “Butterfly on a Wheel”) and screenwriter Howard Himelstein have crafted an entertaining story and captured it well, flattering the Italian coast with stunning cinematography and faithfully interpreting the play. The fan remains the source of a Wilde-ish misunderstanding, the townsfolk are humorously gossipy, and some of Wilde’s best lines (“We all are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,”) retain their rightful place.

But the real standout is Tom Wilkensen as the wealthy, well-meaning, and ultimately wise Tuppy, who falls for Ms. Erlynn halfway through the film. “Would she marry you if you were poor?” a friend asks, to which Tuppy replies: “Would I marry her if she was ugly?” Only a good woman should win the hand of such a man, and testament to Wilkensen’s performance, I kept hoping that’s what Ms. Erlynne would turn out to be.

Grade: B