'The White Countess': A classy period piece

"The White Countess," the final collaboration between director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant (who died last year), is set in Shanghai in the mid-1930s — a city as cluttered with intrigue, black-market enterprise and displaced persons as Bogart's Casablanca. Among them is Countess Sofia Belinsky (Natasha Richardson), a Russian émigré whose aristocratic family has fled the Communists and now lives in severely reduced circumstances in a Shanghai slum. Read the full review

TO SUM UP
In 1930s Shanghai, a blind and disillusioned former U.S. diplomat forms a relationship with a young refugee White Russian countess who has been reduced to a sordid life in the city's bars, working as a taxi driver and occasional prostitute to support members of her late husband's aristocratic family.

FILM FACTS ...
Sony Pictures Classics
'The White Countess'

Director: James Ivory
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Lynn Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, John Wood
Run time: 135 minutes
Release date: Dec. 21, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for some violent images and thematic elements.
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READ THE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: B-
"The acting couldn't be better."

The Palm Beach Post: B+
"...may not be Merchant-Ivory at their best, but even their less than top drawer work is rarefied filmmaking and a treat for those with the patience to appreciate it."


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