Easy Virtue

Risky trip to Roaring Twenties

May 29, 2009|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

'Easy Virtue" is based on a 1925 Noel Coward play, and it strains like mad to hoist his weightless, witty Jazz Age banter into the 21st century. The strain shows, but not so badly as you might think; if you can ignore a ridiculously overbearing soundtrack - a big if - the film's a pleasant bauble. Still, those coming in cold may be forgiven for thinking they've wandered into "Atonement" remade as a farce.

If nothing else, "Easy Virtue" represents a calculated gamble on the part of its star, Jessica Biel, who plays an American aviatrix shocking the rural gentry of England. Her character, Larita, has married a boyish upper-class toff named John Whittaker (Ben Barnes, Prince Caspian in the last "Narnia" movie) and as the film opens, she arrives at his parents' country estate like a glittering visitor from Mars.

Mama is not amused. Mrs. Whittaker (Kristin Scott Thomas) rules the manor with an iron hand and isn't open to second-guessing from dashing divorcees, no matter how glamorous. Her husband (Colin Firth), a gone-to-seed army officer still bitter over losing his unit in the trenches of WWI, thinks Larita's much the best thing to turn up in years. In the middle are the two daughters, Dumpy (Katherine Parkinson as Marion) and Flighty (Kimberly Nixon as Hilda).

There's a bit of upstairs/downstairs comedy as the American finds herself more at home with the family's cynical butler (Kris Marshall), but mostly "Easy Virtue" is about the conflict between mother and daughter-in-law and the splendors of period production design. The costumes are an end in themselves; one shot of Biel in a sheer white evening gown is so gob-stopping the film repeats it in a later scene.

As directed by Stephan Elliott, who has previously veered from the cross-dressing high spirits of 1994's "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" to the lunatic thriller nonsense of "Eye of the Beholder" (1999), "Easy Virtue" never finds its rhythm. A scene in which Larita accidentally snuffs the family lapdog is played for peppy farce; the flashbacks to the father's wartime tragedies weight the film with more grief than it's equipped to handle. A subplot involving a rich neighbor's (Christian Brassington) flirtation with Mrs. Whittaker and his daughter's (Charlotte Riley) longstanding torch for John just languishes.