Naomi Watts / Somerset Maugham / The Painted Veil

 

Naomi Watts / William Somerset Maugham

THE PAINTED VEIL

The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham / Edward Norton & Naomi Watts

A Movie/Book Review: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham / Edward Norton & Naomi Watts

NOBYEN / 2018

Should you first read the book, or first watch the movie? Lots of arguments could be given for either side. I'm mostly on the side of the 'book-first', as I love reading and the great books should not be spoiled by images of someone else before you make your own. But not in this case...

I've tried not to put in any spoiler, as I'd encourage everyone to read this book/watch the movie.

Film / The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil

Philip French

Sunday 29 April 2007

S

omerset Maugham's 1925 novel The Painted Veil, previously filmed rather beautifully in 1934 starring Greta Garbo and indifferently in 1957 as The Seventh Sin, is the tale of Kitty (Naomi Watts), the errant wife of Walter (Edward Norton), a strait-laced English doctor in China.

As a form of punishment, he takes her into a remote, cholera-stricken province where she experiences redemption and comes to love her husband. The novel was inspired by an incident in Dante's 'Purgatorio' which Maugham had read as a medical student in the late 19th century, and much influenced by his terminally troubled marriage.

This version is tougher than the previous ones and convincingly in period. The three principal actors (two Americans and an Australian) affect acceptable British accents, and there are admirable performances from Diana Rigg as the acerbic mother superior of an orphanage for Chinese children and Toby Jones as dodgy colonial official. The film is inevitably more critical of Europeans in Asia than is the novel and, for no good reason, Kitty's child has been changed from a daughter to a son, but Ron Nyswaner has generally made a decent adaptation.

I admire Alexandre Desplat greatly but found his score here a trifle excessive. On the other hand, I can't praise too highly the cinematography by New Zealander Stuart Dryburgh, whose interiors, shot in a Beijing studio, are as beautifully lit as the paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby.

THE GUARDIAN