The House of Mirth

Wow. Terence Davies' "House of Mirth" is a film that is just brilliant.

Essentially, the plot focuses on Lily Bart (Gillian Anderson) a socialite in the early 1900s in New York who, through a series of tragic circumstances, goes from being popular and admired to being a social outcast. Anderson is perfect in the role, and we feel all of her emotions. The superb cast includes Dan Aykroyd and Eric Stolz as two of her suitors, and Anthony LaPaglia, great as always, as a man who tries to help Lily out despite her pride winning over.

Davies' direction is incredible, one scene is simply of an empty house as it rains and it is just mind-blowing. The script, also, feels real all of the time which is a credit to the actors also.

I definitely recommend this movie, but don't expect it to zoom straight by and then be forgotten!

Along with Scorsese's, The Age of Innocence and Iain Softley's, The Wings of the Dove, Terence Davies' The House of Mirth forms a triumvirate of modern period drama for a discerning audience. Davies is not interested chiefly in either scenery or costume - that is, in history as a heritage theme-park - but in the story, its themes and characters, and in teasing out good performances from his cast. The modest budget of this film works in its favour. Most of the best scenes and shots are framed in intimacy, not lost amidst panoramas of superficial grandeur or the shallow aesthetics of Merchant-Ivory-style film making.

At the heart of Davies' film is Gillian Anderson's brilliant performance as Lilly Bart. Since she is on screen almost all of the time the film really stands or falls by her performance. She sheds her "X-Files" persona in moments and conveys an enormous range of subtle emotions as her character vacillates between an almost involuntary avarice and moral scruples, foolishness, charm, fortune and tragedy. The affect of Anderson's performance is lasting and deep. Indeed, this film lives on long in the memory and continued to trouble me for weeks after I had seen it.

This is a slow paced mesmerising film. If your only knowledge of Gillian Anderson is as Dana Scully in the X-Files then you are in for a big surprise. Firstly the lady can act, and secondly with great subtlety. If you have read the book then clearly the writer/director Terence Davies has taken a few liberties. But so much script has been lifted word for word from the novel that I think he can be forgiven any eccentricities. This is a story of manners in early twentieth century New York and environs. Everyone seems so decent and 'proper', but each plays their own manipulative game. No-one (with the exception of Sim Rosedale) tells the truth. As a morality tale it seems as relevant today as when Edith Wharton wrote it. Davies has succeeded in losing none of its mood or punch by transferring it to screen. Unfortunately I think this is a film that requires watching more than once as some explanatory scenes appear to have ended up on the cutting room floor. Generally the acting is excellent throughout though I felt that at times Davies's enthusiasm for detail hamstrung some actors where others appeared to have relished the close direction. This is a film to add to your personal collection.

House of Mirth is a richly painted tapestry of a piece of early American Society all but unrecognizable to most Americans. It's a great story and great looking, but the real surprise in Terence Davies' adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel is how deftly Gillian Anderson among others manages to gracefully convey the stilted rigors of the period language. The film is largely about the traps and deceits verbal gamesmanship and class one-upsmanship. It is a deadly and vicious internal warfare that goes on with the upper class bourgeois in New York City in the early 20th century. The price one pays – particularly that a woman pays – for straying too far from the unwritten laws of that society can be severe. Lillie Bart's flaw is not really in her indiscretions, but in her inability to compromise at the right time. Her timing is fatally flawed. That the film is so relentlessly tragic, really takes the viewer by surprise, partly because Anderson gives her character such spunk and vivaciousness that you find yourself surprised by the endless bad luck that she brings on herself. Anderson's remarkable beauty, poise as an actress, facility with the dialogue, in my mind, bring her to a whole new level as an actress.

It is also wonderfully cinematic. There are rich colors and textures, beautifully framed scenes, marvellous costumes. Though steeped in tragedy and melodrama, you'll find yourself so swept away in this world that it will seem centuries and not merely decades removed from our time. Perhaps this is why the titles at the beginning and at the end are `New York 1914' – you need this reminder by the end.

With a host of good performances and a rich sense of place you will get emotionally and imaginatively swept up in this world. Just be prepared for the landing.

"The House of Mirth" is that rare thing, a British film about America. Officially it is an international co-production, but it was not only made by a British director, Terence Davies, but also shot on location in Britain, even though most of the action is supposed to take place in and around New York. (As a keen birdwatcher I have to say that I could tell that it had been shot on this side of the Atlantic from some of the typically European birdsong in the background). It is, in fact, a good example of the sort of costume drama at which the British film industry has traditionally excelled, although there have been some notable American examples such as Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence", also based upon a novel by Edith Wharton.

The action takes place in 1905. At the opening of the film its heroine, the socialite Lily Bart, appears to be living a charmed life. She is young, beautiful and the niece of the wealthy Mrs Julia Peniston. Yet her position is more precarious than she realises and the film traces her downfall from wealth into poverty and from respectability into social disgrace. The title is deeply ironic; this is a tragedy, not a comedy, and there is nothing about Lily's position that might arouse mirth. Wharton took her title from the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth".

The implication of this title is that those who live merely for mirth or pleasure are foolish, and certainly Lily's downfall is partly the result of her own folly; she incurs, for example, large gambling debts which she is unable to meet. Yet it is also partly the result of the hypocrisy of American high society in the early years of the twentieth century. Although some Americans tried to pretend that theirs was a classless society, the ultra-rich of New York could be just as ruthlessly snobbish as their counterparts in London, Paris or Berlin, and just as ruthlessly unforgiving of those who fell foul of society's unwritten rules. Lily's reputation is damaged not only by her gambling habit, which alienates her puritanically religious aunt, but also by an untrue allegation of an affair with a married man. (The allegation is made by the man's wife, who wants to distract attention from her own adultery). At times Lily's own good nature works against her; she has the opportunity to revenge herself on the woman who has unjustly accused her, but refuses to take it because to do so would also compromise Lawrence Selden, the man she loves.

The star of the film is Gillian Anderson, which surprised me when I first saw it in the cinema as I had previously only though of her as "that bird from the X-Files" or the girl who, a few years earlier, had been voted "Most Beautiful Woman in the World" by the readers of FHM magazine. (This aroused some ungallant comments from members of the anti-redhead brigade, who opined that Gillian had only won the title because readers had confused her with her namesake Pamela). "The House of Mirth", however, proved two things. Firstly, it proved that Gillian was a much more versatile actress than I had hitherto supposed. Secondly, it proved (to my satisfaction at least) that she was far more ravishingly beautiful than Pamela Anderson ever knew how to be. Her Lily Bart is one of the great tragic heroines of modern cinema; I was reminded of Nastassia Kinski's performance in "Tess", another period drama about a beautiful young woman who struggles vainly to escape a cruel and inexorable fate.

There are other good performances from Laura Linney as Lily's accuser, the spiteful Bertha Dorset, from Dan Aykroyd (an actor I more normally associate with comedy) as the financier Gus Trenor who unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Lily, Jodhi May as Lily's quiet but scheming and hypocritical cousin Grace Stepney, who eventually inherits Mrs Penistone's fortune and Eric Stoltz as Selden.

Like many British period dramas, the film is beautifully photographed and makes use of some sumptuous sets and costumes. My one criticism would be that, in the early scenes it moves too slowly, but the pace gradually quickens as Lily's tragic drama is played out to its climax; the ending is particularly moving. This is one of the finest period dramas of recent years. A film to savour. 9/10