Easy Virtue

Easy Virtue

Director:Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert)

Staring: Jessica Biel (The Illusionist) Colin Firth (Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice), Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient)

Year: 2008
Genre: Independent/UK period piece set in the 1920s
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Tedious & Brief's Realistic Rating: Maybe some minor cursing.  There's some smoking, maybe some very brief nudity and mentioning of someone posing nude for a painting. This could have been scandalous in the 1920s and 1930s.  Now the smoking is the most scandalous bit and the rest of it would be too tame prime time TV.

Running time: 97 minutes

       I recently started watching Downton Abbey, partly on recommendation of blog commenter "Mark" and partly because I was able to legally find it online to watch after seeing the first two episodes of the new season this previous weekend on tv.  And the setting and period of Downton Abbey reminds me of this film. 

       Sitting in their comfy, yet floundering, English estate, the Whittaker family compromises what would modernly be consider a dysfunctional family.  The strict and cold mother, Veronica (Scott Thomas) is trying to keep the household together with a stiff upper lip.  Her husband (Firth) is aloof, smart, but chill who seems to try ignoring his wife as best as he can and checks out to the man-cave er...garage when he can to get away from it.  Their younger daughter is interested in gossip and news (who first appears raving about the  St. Valentine's Day massacre) and the elder, somewhat homely daughter is convinced that her love, who seems to have fled to the States, will be coming back for her.  The final family member, their only son, John (Ben Barnes) is out on the continent exploring, having left behind the family's neighbor's daughter/his former girlfriend and childhood friend Sarah (Charlotte Riley).

       News comes that not only is young John coming home (!) but he is also bringing home his new wife (!!!), the American notorious race-car driver Larita (Biel).  Immediately you understand the mother's disappointment that her son's wife is American, but also a widow.  Larita is the exact opposite of her new mother-in-law, vivacious, modern, daring, stylish, a true rebel in that she won a major car race pretending to be a man.  The two instantly seem to dislike each other (more so the mother-in-law towards the new daughter-in-law) and that sets up one of the major conflicts of the film.  Larita seems to be the embodiment of everything post-Great War America is supposed to be: brash and exciting.  She's almost too modern to believe in the period piece.

       The rest of the family takes various different views on the new relationship, from at times awe to her modernness to utter contempt at her easy virtue and modern ways.  There is another conflict between Veronica and her husband, and possibly the source of the coldness, as the husband, an army Major in World War I did not return home directly after the Armistice, instead staying in France for a time.  Plus, Larita, wishing to get back to the racing she loves, stifles under the idea that she should stay at the house and not see the world.

       The acting is actually really enjoyable with Firth, Biel, and Scott Thomas all giving wonderful performances in their roles.  Firth is at his best as the casual, disheveled un-Dacryesque father, a veteran of the horrors of war who seems both troubled by life and at ease with it.  Possibly the most interesting actor to watch in the film isn't any of the leads, but the butler Furber (Kris Marshall, possibly best known from Love Actually as Colin Frissell).  It is a relatively small role, but Marshall makes it completely memorable.

       At times this film takes maybe a bit of suspension of belief.  Larita sometimes seems a bit out of place and too modern for the time period and at times the daughters seem to go from disliking her to liking her to disliking her without total explanation, though it could just be that since the film spans several months this is just the natural progression of how people act towards each other when living together.  The soundtrack is also really quite fun, including a 1920's re-imagining of "When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going" and the song "Sex Bomb".



Rating: 4 out of 5.  It is not the best film ever, but I find it fun.  Now if only I could get my hands on a copy of the Noël Coward play it's based off of to read....

And for those of you who really like this time period, I saw a nice blog post including some photos of fashion from the film you may be interested in here.