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Grade: B+

Verdict: Masterful despite a game but miscast Gillian Anderson.

Details: Starring Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Dan Aykroyd and Laura Linney. Directed by Terence Davies. Rated PG for social themes too complex for children. Two hours, 20 minutes.

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Review: The House of Mirth" is lovely to look at. But as John Huston once said, 99 percent of directing is casting.

And that's the one thing wrong with Terence Davies' otherwise exquisite adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel.

The title, of course, is ironic. There's nothing funny about being a part of New York society, circa 1905. Rather, it's a dangerous minefield where a misplaced look or a damaging bit of gossip (true or not) can bring disaster.

Wharton's heroine, Lily Bart (Gillian Anderson), has successfully negotiated that minefield for years. For too many years, she fears. Beautiful, bright and well-connected (she's poor, but her aunt is rich and their bloodlines are socially acceptable), she's been an asset at countless weekends in the country and even more dinner parties, where she's usually seated next to the eligible bachelor.

However, Lily is 29 and still unmarried. As she says to Lawrence Seldon (Eric Stoltz), the not-rich-enough lawyer she loves but can't consider marrying, "I've been about too long. People are getting tired of me."

You see, Lily's innate decency is at odds with her chosen "career" of finding a marriageable male. She wants to marry for love and money.

Lily is impetuous and sometimes just plain foolish. Her house-party card playing racks up debts, and she's heedless enough to think that an offer of help made by a fat-cat married man (Dan Aykroyd) comes with no strings attached. And she's trusting enough to think that the social doyenne (Laura Linney, all smiles and claws) who's befriended her has her best interests at heart.

Lily begins to fall through the cracks. She doesn't notice that the intricate web of the right people and the right pedigree that has always protected her has begun to shred.

You don't have to have endured the rigors of a debutante season or a Junior League placement to know how astute "The House of Mirth" is. Wharton is superbly attuned to the dainty brutalities of these well-bred New Yorkers. What makes the movie work so well is that Davies, whose previous films ("Distant Voices, Distant Rooms," "The Long Day Closes") were almost unwatchable, is so attuned to Wharton. He gets her. And he gets her right.

Adding to the movie's considerable power is the way it looks. Until she falls from grace, Lily lives in a lavish gilded cage. A place where the lace-embroidered parasols are as impressive as the imported porcelain. All this prettiness functions as a pleasing cover for so much petty ugliness.

So much is right here that it's almost painful to bring up the downside. And that harks back to Huston's comment. No matter how attractive and talented and charismatic Anderson is (she'll be a revelation for "X-Files" fans), she's miscast. She simply doesn't get the nimble flirtatiousness that's kept Lily unharmed for so many years. She's too grounded, too together. She lacks both the the airy coquettishness and the swanlike neck of a social butterfly.

She's best when things go wrong for Lily; her final scenes are heartbreaking. But essentially, she's playing the end of the movie from the beginning.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution