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'The White Countess': A classy period piece
by Eleanor Ringel Gillespie

"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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On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

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READ THE REVIEW

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

Read the full review

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."