Aussie director Stephan Elliott took a long sabbatical from filmmaking after his comedy Welcome to Woop Woop and thriller Eye of the Beholder failed to replicate the success of his 1994 breakthrough The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
He made a comeback after a nine-year hiatus with Easy Virtue, an adaptation of the play Noël Coward wrote in 1924, when he was 24. The satire of an English aristocratic family who try to disguise their parlous financial state after World War 1 bombed in the US and the UK, and it grossed a modest $2.8 million in Australia.
It was the second screen version following a 1928 silent film directed by, of all people, Alfred Hitchcock. The result is not a bad film but it’s hampered by dubious casting, hammy acting from the usually reliable Kristin Scott Thomas, and the intrusive device of having the characters sing snippets of Cole Porter songs.
Jessica Biel plays Larita, the brash, glamorous new American wife of upper-class twit John Whittaker (Ben Barnes). His steely, snobbish mother Veronica (Scott Thomas) is aghast to learn that Larita is a divorcee and that the newlyweds intend to live in London, not the family’s shabby country mansion.
Veronica barely manages to keep up appearances, lumbered with a dishevelled, world-weary husband Jim (Colin Firth), who returned shell-shocked from the war, and horrid daughters Marion (Katherine Parkinson) and Hilda (Kimberley Nixon).
Elliott infuses the movie with plenty of Coward’s blithe spirit, while the main dramatic interest centres on Larita’s dark secret and whether, or when, the Whittaker’s veneer of genteel respectability will crumble.
Biel is all light and froth initially, gaily tossing off witty lines like 'If I could find your neck, Phillip, I’d wring it," and she shows a surprising depth as her character suffers assorted indignities. Barnes is only marginally less vapid and dull as he was as Prince Caspian, and there is precious little chemistry or passion between the couple. Firth is fine as the droll but emotionally-wounded Jim, but Scott Thomas is an over-wrought Veronica, with a performance that verges on the edge of hysteria. Generous extras include a commentary by Elliott and co-writer Sheridan Jobbins, deleted scenes and a goof tape.
