The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil proves that Naomi Watts is the most underrated Hollywood actress and Edward Norton should be used more often as a romantic leading man (if The Illusionist hasn’t made that clear).

The movie is based on a 1925 same name novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham was one of the most popular authors in the 1930s and had quite a few of his works adapted by Hollywood during his lifetime. His most famous work may be The Razor’s Edge and it affected me deeply when I read it years ago. I have not read The Painted Veil, but Kitty Fane in the movie has some similarities with Isabel, the heroine in The Razor’s Edge. They are both selfish and manipulative; they cannot live without love, but also cannot live without life’s luxury.

It took Edward Norton more than seven years to make this movie and I desperately tried to love this movie more. However, it simply seems that this specific book by Maugham may not be worth all the trouble to be made into a movie. The story is too predictable and the characters are not that interesting. Kitty Fane (played by Watts), the unfaithful wife of the good doctor, Walter (played by Norton), is forced to embark on a journey with her husband to inland China. It takes a cholera epidemic and national uprising to have her fall in love with her husband, but is it too late?

Norton and Watts are the two big reasons for anyone to endure this two-hour melodrama. Maugham was an expert at writing female characters and here Kitty is a much richer character to play. Watts, who was totally overlooked in King Kong by the Academy, was overlooked again this time around. She is so good at expressing every emotion Kitty goes through that she completely makes the character her own. Norton may have been miscast as Walter in this movie. Maybe I am just so biased towards him. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries to be a stiff and slightly boring doctor, I still find him irresistible and cannot understand how Kitty is able to see him differently. British actor Toby Jones also gives a warm-hearted performance in this movie.

The movie is entirely shot in China. Norton and Co. have found some beautiful and untapped territory to film. The result looks fantastic on screen and Gui Lin could easily vie with Paris for romantic capital of the world. Director John Curran has also shown some promises as a director with only a few movies under his belt. The opening shot establishes the two characters’ relationship clearly without their uttering a single word. We see Kitty and Walter with their back to each other. The short distance between them seems to be longer than thousands of miles that separate them from their homeland. Then the camera moves to the native people staring at them. In that one shot, we feel both their isolation from each other and from this strange new place. In flashback, we see how Kitty and Walter meet, Kitty’s affair in Shanghai and why they decide to come to the God-forsaken Chinese town that is plagued by cholera. Curran and screenwriter Roy Nyswaner trust the camera to do most of the talking for them when it comes to showing Kitty and Walter’s life in Shanghai. When they first arrive in Walter’s Shanghai residence, the rooms look bare. Later when Walter and Kitty have their confrontation, the house has been much more furnished and there is even a piano for Kitty to play. One could sense that Walter has probably been bowing to Kitty’s every demand and has tried hard to please her. That makes Kitty’s betrayal even more heartbreaking for him. When it comes to Kitty’s lover Charlie and husband Walter, Curran simply uses two shots of their shoes to contrast these two characters: Walter’s shoes are well placed even when he is ready to make love to his wife while Charlie’s shoes are scattered around by the bed. One can probably guess what attracts Kitty to Charlie. Unfortunately for some reason, Currant loses his subtlety for the ending. Kitty’s transformation is pretty obvious near the end of the movie and that renders the last scene quite unnecessary.

At various times the movie attempts to have the audience contemplate some serious issues such as foreign government intervention and the Catholic Church’s dubious role in helping the poor, but it has little room to go any further. Overall The Painted Veil is a well done melodrama, but a melodrama all the same.