A Good Woman - Palm Beach Post movie review

For the patient, there's a lot to love about 'A Good Woman'

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

As long as you are willing to lean in and listen carefully — two things moviegoers are notoriously reticent to do — there are plenty of well-crafted, witty one-liners in A Good Woman, a much-reworked new film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's stage play, Lady Windemere's Fan.

Lions Gate Films

'A Good Woman'

B+

The verdict: An aphorism-laden tale of social intrigue, based on Wilde's play, opened up and transferred to Italy.

Director: Mike Barker
Starring: Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Campbell Moore, Mark Umbers
Run time: 93 minutes
Release date: Feb. 3, 2006
Rating: PG-13 for thematic material, sensuality and language.
See showtimes

On the web
Official movie site

Presumably all the action-adventure fans have now clicked elsewhere, so the PBS crowd has a little more elbow room.

If, for instance, you liked the recent movie version of Wilde's An Ideal Husband, there is every reason to think you will enjoy this tampered with, but still recognizable rendering of Wilde's first theatrical success from 1892.

Director Mike Barker moves the story ahead to the 1930s, presumably to take advantage of the flapper fashions and the cars of that period. He changed several key characters from Brits to Americans, presumably so Scarlett Johansson and Helen Hunt did not have to grapple with accents. And best of all, he moved the tale's setting to the Amalfi Coast of Italy, so there is plenty to look at while listening to the Wildean bons mots.

There the idle rich convene, including Robert (Mark Umbers) and Meg (Johansson) Windemere, married a year and happily so, but that does not mean that jealousy and suspicion cannot erode their bliss. For setting her sights on Robert is a Mrs. Erlynne (Hunt), no longer young, yet still able to attract married men willing to keep her in jewels and groceries.

But such arrangements are usually temporary, as we observe in the film's prologue, in which Erlynne has to leave her New York hotel abruptly, one step ahead of her paramour's wife, hocking a few baubles for ocean liner fare to Italy.

There, too conveniently, she runs into Robert in a boutique and they forge a fast relationship of frequent noontime rendezvous in her villa, which gets the tongues of the society biddies wagging. None of this would faze the naive but loyal Meg if she had not noticed the stubs of numerous, sizable checks to Erlynne in her husband's ledger.

Of course, all is not as the gossip-mongers would have it, but it will take a while before secrets get sorted out and motives are understood. Along the way, the fan that Robert bought for Meg becomes incriminating — then exonerating — evidence and lessons are learned.

Throughout all that, the screenplay by Howard Himmelstein sprinkles aphorisms like "I find the best way to keep my word is never to give it" and "Every man is born truthful and every man dies a liar." Some come directly from Lady Windemere's Fan, some are culled from Wilde's other plays like a "best of" hits compilation and a few are pure Himmelstein. No one really talks like that, but these dry zingers give the film a stylized sheen that trumps the equally contrived plot.

Hunt, who has made several unimpressive movie choices since her Oscar win for As Good As It Gets, gets her juiciest role in years and shows she still can hold the screen. This is so even opposite the much younger Johansson, who handles this ingénue role far better than the whiny one-note actress wannabe in Match Point. Best of all, though, is Tom Wilkinson as wealthy, unattached Tuppy, charmingly eager to be next in line for Erlynne's clutches.

The original play was confined to a British drawing room, while A Good Woman — the stage work's earlier title — is opened up stylishly throughout Amalfi, given a storybook air by cinematographer Ben Seresin and production designer Ben Scott. Hopefully there is a sufficient audience for this sort of well-made trifle.