The Painted Veil reminded me of an old Merchant/Ivory production with its lushly photographed scenery and its focus on performance between the actors. Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, the film is crammed with character detail that will have you and anyone you see it with arguing over the finer points for days. Brilliantly acted by two solid leads and a couple of fine supporting performers, The Painted Veil is compelling if not wholly original.



The story takes place in the 1920s and Britain’s Edwardian society still frowns on a single woman of advancing years – a woman like Kitty Fane (Naomi Watts). Kitty is bright and vivacious, but to get away from her nagging mother she marries a dry doctor named Walter (Edward Norton) and moves with him to China where he works with infectious diseases. In China, she meets diplomat Charles Townshead (Liev Schreiber), Kitty enters into an adulterous affair. When Walter finds out he gives Kitty an ultimatum: she can join him inland where he’ll be attending a terrible cholera outbreak or he can give her a scathing and scandalous divorce. Kitty chooses the former, but while in the Chinese interior, far from their luxuries, Walter and Kitty find their love blossoming.



I don’t think enough can be said about the work of Norton and Watts; they really make the material, which is at times a bit derivative, work and work well. Norton especially knows how to use Walter’s stoic sense as a characteristic and not a crutch for the actor to not emote. Norton wonderfully and subtly paints lines of emotion in Walter when he finds out about Kitty’s betrayal, and when she chastises him by saying that a wife’s infidelity is the fault of the husband, Norton’s slight flinch at hearing these words was fantastic. The script does a pretty good job of not making Kitty the villain either and Watt’s charm keeps the character grounded and likeable.



I did have some problems with the third act, as some of the developments came across rather soap operatic in its melodrama. There are some developments that I won’t spoil only to say that they were rather obvious in coming. I give Norton and Watts credit though because they hold some of the more sensational down to the grindstone of reality. Director John Curran keeps the film tightly focused on the relationship between these two people and he doesn’t deviate from the main crux of the film, which is the question of whether these two desperately different people can find a way to love and live with each other.



The Painted Veil is by far a movie worth seeing for the performances. It’s a wonderful character piece that was terribly overlooked this past awards season. For anyone interested in watching good acting by great actors, this is a master class.