PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema"
Hold on to your hats – Philip and Belinda Haas have made another dull and slow-moving film. Their latest is based on a W. Somerset Maugham novella, which was directed by Philip and adapted for the screen by Belinda, the duo responsible for the snore-fests Angels & Insects and The Blood Oranges.
The setting may sound familiar - pre-World War II Florence at that time when things are just beginning to get a bit uncomfortable for English citizens living in Italy. But this is no Tea With Mussolini. Possibly Crumpets With Clara (as in Peracci – Mussolini's mistress), but even that would be pushing it. I don't know where it's written that all period pictures have to include at least one ballroom dancing scene that features fancy chandeliers, ladies in long, white gloves and men in tails and top hats. Just once, I'd like to see a film that leaves this scene out. Or at least postpones it for the first thirty or forty minutes. Here, it's Villa's first scene.
Villa stars Kristin Scott Thomas (Random Hearts) as Mary Panton, a widowed Brit freeloading in Florence (that would have been a better title as well). She hobnobs with society's upper crust, thanks to a friendship with gossipy Princess San Ferdinando (Anne Bancroft, Keeping the Faith), and even has a potential beau in Sir Edgar Swift (James Fox, Mickey Blue Eyes). He's the kind of uptight Englishman that seems like he's got a pole jammed where the sun don't shine, and he requests Mary's hand in marriage as if he just asked her to pass the Grey Poupon. Sir Edgar is also the Governor of Bengal, so Mary would be set financially and socially for life.
Right off the bat, allow me to suggest two ways that Villa could have been better. First, they could have cast Jaime Foxx instead of James Fox. Now that's already more interesting. Second, they could have made his role as the Governor of Bengal involve wearing a rainbow-colored wig at all of Cincinnati's home football games.
Anyway, Mary doesn't love Sir Edgar but will probably marry him regardless. Then she meets a randy American named Rowley Flint (Sean Penn, Sweet and Lowdown) and confides her situation to him one evening after a party. Mary is obviously attracted to Rowley, but gives him a fresh one when he tells her not to marry Sir Edgar and then tries to put the moves on her.
Instead, Mary has a one-night fling with an Austrian refugee violin player (Jeremy Davies, Ravenous) that ends up offing himself in a particularly lackluster scene that I'm sure was supposed to be suspenseful. Mary and Rowley ditch the body and almost get caught, which made me think that Villa had one more chance to redeem itself by turning into Weekend at Bernie's Villa. But, of course, it doesn't. It's just too happy being miserably boring instead. And who would have thought that this role would have been more embarrassing for Bancroft than Keeping the Faith?
1:55 – PG-13 for light sexual content and mild violence
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