Tricky Virtue

By Steven Zeitchik

We've never quite seen a film-festival reaction like the one given this past week to "Easy Virtue," one of the many titles available here at Toronto. Usually at a fest people will bring up a film, dissect it, talk about why it will be the biggest sale of the festival (if they're repping it) or a complete bomb (if they're not).

But with Stephan Elliot's period comedy-of-manners, it's a whole different story. At a party or event, you'll be standing in a group of people, someone will bring up the film, laugh conspiratorially with someone else in the group who's seen it, they'll shake their heads, and then move on without explaining what the heck they're talking about. It feels a little like how you might talk about an eccentric relative who didn't come to Thanksgiving dinner that year -- a murmured note of recognition followed by whispers of past baggage. And if you've never met the relative, you're lost.

We finally got a chance to see the movie Thursday, and, at the risk of joining a club whose rituals we once decried, we now kind of get the puzzlement.

Don't get us wrong -- "Virtue" has charm and likability to burn. Based on Noel Coward's early play, it centers on an American woman who, sometime around 1930, scandalizes an upper-crust British family by marrying the family's playboy son and taking an extended trip with him to the family estate. That is unusual in and of itself -- a movie that could have been made a half century ago is here re-created, with careful fidelity to the period and the genre, and with ample talent (and it is talent; Kristin Scott Thomas shines as the snarky matriarch and Colin Firth hits a perfect note as her beaten down but winning husband). The writing is dense and witty, with many of Coward's barbs carefully preserved.

It's all an amazing and impressie exercise in creating something no one tries to create anymore. Still, one has to ask why there was a need for a movie like this when things like Netflix subscriptions exist -- or, for that matter, when a trip to the library would satisfy the cravings of even most ardent comedy-of-manners junkie.

Even stranger, the movie retrofits some very modern touches in moments that lie just this side of anachronism. Several key scenes are anchored by throwback versions of "Sex Bomb" and "When the Going Get Tough." Yes, the "Sex Bomb" popularized by Ricky Martin, and the "When Going Gets Tough" written and performed (for that well-known Edwardian class comedy "The Jewel of the Nile") by Billy Ocean.

But these details pale when compared to the one truly surreal point. The American woman, a racecar driver who shows up to instigate the havoc, is none other than..Jessica Biel. Jessica Biel, all tricked out in a blond Bette Davis hairdo and sounding very American, which is especially odd as most American actresses in the era when these kinds of movies were made sounded a little British. Jessica Biel, in a role clearly meant to revolutionize her career even as its primary effect is to make you think 'Man, this sure is a long way to come from playing the older daughter on 'Seventh Heaven.'"

Publicity, of even the oddball kind, does have its, well, virtues. Many execs have gone to check it out over its run, though no one's bought the movie yet. Some might, but we have a sense distributors at the moment are simply happy to have it around as a conversation piece. After all, what would Thanksgiving be without an eccentric relative?

Comments

[Rita Fast]

Wow! I had a totally different experience of this film in Toronto. I saw it at the Elgin - and the audience was enthusiastic. There were laughs galore - even a fulsome standing ovation which drowned out the closing credits. It's true that it's a period film - but one with totally modern themes... not the least of which with Sarah Pallin in the running for 'modern family values' - about hypocrisy and virtue. For what it's worth - I also thought Jessica Beil was terrific - funny and beautiful in equal parts.