Grade: B-

Verdict: This “Bowl” is half full and half empty.

Details: Starring Nick Nolte, Kate Beckinsale, Uma Thurman and Jeremy Northam. Directed by James Ivory. Rated R for sexuality. At Garden Hills. Two hours, 14 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: “The Golden Bowl” may not be the best film to come from the Ismail Merchant/James Ivory team, but it's certainly one of the most beautiful. Considering that the competition includes “A Room With a View” and “Howards End,” that's no small compliment.

This time, Merchant (producer) and Ivory (director) have tackled Henry James' last novel, written in 1904. As they say, I don't know much about James — in fact, I know next to nothing — but I know what I like. And I like a lot of this film even though, like the expensive titular knickknack, it's not perfect.

Adam Verver (Nick Nolte), America's first billionaire, collects European art as voraciously as his peers collect racehorses and mistresses. A widower, he and daughter Maggie (Kate Beckinsale) have become particularly close. That's about to change now that Maggie is engaged to marry the well-bred but financially challenged Italian aristocrat, Prince Amerigo (Jeremy Northam). Ever the devoted daughter, Maggie worries, “It'll be he and I and you alone.”

Her solution is to throw her father together with her unattached school chum, Charlotte (Uma Thurman). It works and they, too, are wed. What neither Maggie nor Adam knows is that their spouses were once lovers. Maury Povich probably does 10 shows a year on stuff like this (My Stepmother Slept With My Husband!). However, James takes a more sophisticated approach, tracing the social, emotional and psychological fallout as the Amerigo-Charlotte relationship grows more heated and they grow more indiscreet. Their behavior does not go unnoticed, especially by Fanny Assingham (Anjelica Huston), the socialite who introduced Maggie to Amerigo.

The film has a gift for detail. Not only in the ravishing dresses and drawing rooms, but in subtle character nuances. Notice how, when the newly engaged Maggie is walking with her father and fiancé, Adam instinctively puts his arm around her waist, only to meet Amerigo's hand. He quickly withdraws, and if a hand could show a mix of surprise and self-reproach, Nolte's does.

Further, it's to the movie's credit that Amerigo is never portrayed as a mere gold digger. Yes, Maggie's money will help restore the crumbling ancestral home (where the falling flakes of gold leaf on the ceiling are poisonous . . . hmmm), but it's clear he truly cares for her.

Finally, watch how the lovers turn Maggie and Adam's closeness into an excuse for their adultery. They are the victims, not their spouses. Before launching their affair, they agree, “We are so very alone because they are so very together.”

Where does the movie go wrong? The filmmakers play the subtext so heavily that “The Golden Bowl” can be borderline laughable. Someone is always noting the hairline crack that desecrates the seeming perfection of the bowl. Sorta like a secret affair desecrates two seemingly perfect marriages. The first reference to the symbolic parallel is OK; the fifth is wince-inducing.

Nolte easily conveys the brusque vitality of a turn-of-the-century tycoon. But there's also a sensitive side to Adam. His affinity for art explains why, ultimately, he's the tragic hero of the piece. Beckinsale, who's about to become a household name thanks to “Pearl Harbor,” brings a delicate touch to an underrealized character (gee, it's hard to play innocent and good).

Northam is obviously a British actor playing an Italian. However, he's a very fine British actor. It makes a difference. As for Thurman, she's the real golden bowl here. She looks gorgeous in her succession of to-die-for outfits, but she's the hairline fracture in the ensemble. She's not bad, but she's unable to imbue her character with the complexity that would give the movie a crucial spark.

But don't worry about Uma. Concentrate on Huston's savvy turn as a plain-spoken society matron along the lines of Kathy Bates as the “unsinkable” Molly Brown in “Titanic.” She's not in the movie all that much. Even so, you can't shake the feeling that you're watching the early front-runner for best supporting actress of 2001.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution