UP AT THE VILLA
Reviewed by Harvey Karten USA Films/October Films Director: Philip Haas Writer: Belinda Haas, based on a W. Somerset Maugham novella Cast: Anne Bancroft, Jeremy Davies, James Fox, Derek Jacobi, Sean Penn, Kristin Scott Thomas
If you were a good-looking, sophisticated, but not highly schooled woman of about thirty-five, recently widowed and more or less broke, what would you do if you had these options? Alternative one: accept a proposal of marriage to a rich, successful, stable man of about 60 who has been appointed to a highly prestigious post in an exotic foreign land and who you feel will never desert you. Choice two: Live dangerously and hang out with a handsome, dashing, witty playboy of about your own age, who is married only in name to a woman he will probably never see again. He promises nothing permanent: just fun, romance, and thrills during whatever time you are together with him.
You say choice two? Is there a possibility that your selection is informed by the fact that now, especially in a booming economy, you can always support yourself and need not depend on a man? Absolutely. You've made the right choice. Let's add something to the inquiry. The year is 1938. You're as good looking as you are now. You are an English woman recently widowed to a man whom you loved but who turned out a drunkard, lost all his money, and was killed in an auto accident. But here's the kicker. Women did not by any stretch have the job opportunities that could be found in America and indeed the West nowadays. If you had limited education, even nursing and teaching might be closed to you. You still say choice two? Perhaps you'd have to be in the situation to appreciate the desperation a woman in that situation could feel.
Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas) was just such a person in W. Somerset Maugham's novella "Up at the Villa," which has been given a sumptuous treatment on the screen by Phil Haas. Haas is a flawless choice for a period piece of this nature, having helmed the exquisite "Angels and Insects" (also featuring Kristin Scott Thomas--in a story set in Victorian England about a man who studies the insect world) and "The Music of Chance," which featured James Spader as a man involved in a high-stakes poker game with two eccentric millionaires. For his part, the late Somerset Maugham has been no stranger to screen adaptations of his own works, including "Of Human Bondage" (on every high school reading list to the dismay of teens) and "The Moon and Sixpence," the filmed version of an episode in the life of Paul Gauguin which starred George Sanders.
What gives "Up at the Villa" a quality above that of the recent screen version of Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" is the credibility of the central character, Mary Panton. Panton operates in no way by the mystical mandates of Sarah Miles but is tormented by a confluence of pressures at a crucial point in her life. Living like Tennessee Williams's Blanche Dubois on the kindness of strangers, Mary shares an Italian villa in Florence at the invitation of her long-term, wealthy friend Princess San Ferdinando, where she indulges in the dolce vita of an expatriate community composed of most aging British and American citizens. She has just received a proposal from Sir Edgar Swift (James Fox), recently appointed governor of the Indian state of Bengal, and a man with whom she can share a stable, although loveless life. At a lavish dinner presided over by the princess, she meets an American playboy, Rowley Flint (Sean Penn), who unsuccessfully attempts to seduce her and is told in no uncertain terms by Mary that she does not consider love and romance an important consideration at her stage in life. =
Torn by advice on the one hand by her friend, the princess, to be practical and go with the money, and provoked on the other hand by the dashing Rowley Flint, the conflicted Mary's life is turned around by a chance meeting with a poor refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria, Karl Richter (Jeremy Davies). Richter (performed graciously by Davies) has misinterpreted her gesture of kindness and pity toward him, thereby meeting with a tragic fate that would alter Mary's outlook forever.
This straightforward, well-made tale, filled with cinematographer Maurizio Calvesi's close-ups--which provide a veritable atlas of emotions from the classy, photogenic face of Kristin Scott Thomas--is played against a backdrop of emerging clouds of war. Mussolini's fascists are in control of Italy and already in 1938 ominous commands issue from the office of the local high official, the smooth and educated Beppino Leopardi (Massimo Ghini), which are to impact the entire Anglo-American expatriate community in Florence. =
Anne Bancroft shines in the broadly comic role of the mistress of the villa, who at one point describes her dead husband as bearing "a face so ugly that he scared even the horses" and Derek Jacobi as the foppish Lucky Leadbetter who considers himself lucky indeed if he can wangle an invitation once a year to one of the princess's lavish champagne parties.
What a pleasure to take in an adult movie inhabited by first-rate performers who convincingly play out a time that =
of their lives would be altered by extremist governments and a disastrous war! If you enjoyed Franco Zeffirelli's 1999 saucy "Tea with Mussolini," about a group of eccentric British women, the Scorpioni, in 1930s Florence and the impact of their livelier and more vulgar American counterparts in the expatriate community, you can't go wrong with "Up at the Villa," which is more focussed and appropriately charged with just the right degree of unpredictable melodrama.
Rated PG-13. Running time: 115 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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