THE GOLDEN BOWL ---------------
American Charlotte Stant (Uma Thurman) is in love with Italian Prince Amerigo (Jeremy Northam, "An Ideal Husband"), but she doesn't have the money he needs to restore his beloved family Palazzo. With the help of Fanny Assingham (Anjelica Huston) he becomes betrothed to Maggie Verver (Kate Beckinsale, "The Last Days of Disco"), daughter of America's first billionaire Adam Verver (Nick Nolte), a school chum of Charlotte's. Fanny advises Charlotte that her acquaintance with Amerigo will be kept from the Ververs. In order to remain close to Amerigo, Charlotte nabs Maggie's widowed father and begins a complex game of lies and deceit in the latest Merchant Ivory adaptation of a Henry James novel, "The Golden Blow."
LAURA:
The titular golden bowl is a gold encrusted piece of crystal presented to Charlotte as a possible wedding gift by an antiques merchant. Amerigo, who has accompanied her, advises outside the shop that the crystal is cracked. While Amerigo appears to be content with his lovely, innocent young wife, Charlotte will not let him go and Maggie's devotion to her father allow the foursome to pair up according to Charlotte's desires. Charlotte's passion for Amerigo makes her deaf to gossip, but her husband is not as blind as she might think. His veiled warnings to her go unheeded, but Amerigo is quick to pick up on his father-in-law's doublespeak.
This lusty, modern adaptation by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala gives the art house crowd a period soap opera to relish. James' story casts Charlotte the villain of the piece on a surface level, but some consideration makes one begin to doubt - hasn't Amerigo betrayed everyone, and for money no less, while Charlotte is motivated by love?
Uma Thurman forgoes her usual pallid, somnambular style and sinks her teeth into her meatiest role since "Pulp Fiction." If she seems overtly modern and out of control, those are qualities that make Charlotte such a hair trigger, allowing the film to build up to a squirmy level of tension. Nick Nolte, who had the misfortune being cast in the lead of Merchant Ivory's least successful film "Jefferson in Paris," rises to the occasion here. Adam seems the stereotypical, open, easy-going, buried-in-work American, but Nolte allows the shrewdness to wink out at us even as his costars accept his oblivious good nature. Beckinsdale is terrifically appealing as the naive Maggie. The sweetness she brings to the role emphasizes the underhandedness she's dealt. The English Northam is believable as an Italian aristrocrat, but he's a bit too opaque, not enough an object of such desire. Anjelica Huston can't quite decide on her accent (she seems distinctly Southern American in her initial scene), but does the hand-wringing thing well as her cover-up breaks down. James Fox ("The Remains of the Day") is a comic asset as her husband, Colonel Bob Assingham.
Director Ivory borrows from Jane Campion's "Portrait of a Lady" flourishes, using period title cards, old stills and period-look news footage to move his tale along. A secret meeting between Charlotte and Amerigo at a wax museum is heightened when the eyes from a tableau seem to follow the duplicitous couple, yet a horrific tale from Amerigo's ancestry used to bookend the film is heavy handed. Costume, art direction and locations are lush beyond measure and a treat for the eye.
B+
For more Reeling reviews visit www.reelingreviews.com
laura@reelingreviews.com robin@reelingreviews.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 28719 X-RT-AuthorID: 1487 X-RT-TitleID: 1107628 X-RT-RatingText: B+
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews