Viewers of “The Painted Veil” will be hard-pressed to guess why W. Somerset Maugham was considered an entertaining writer for so many years. This film is as dull and respectable as they come.
It’s the mid-1920s, and a spoiled girl, Kitty (Naomi Watts), impulsively decides to marry an uptight scientist, Walter Fane (Edward Norton). Walter is going off to China to study germs, but Kitty is up for a little adventure.
In Shanghai, she finds it in the arms of a rascally British vice consul (Liev Schreiber), who has clearly done this sort of thing before. Poor Kitty.
And it gets worse: When Walter finds out, he drags Kitty along to a cholera epidemic. It’s a fit of marital peevishness, which could very well kill his wife.
Things evolve in the country, although never in ways that are surprising or moving. The novel was written in 1925, and one expects some new take on fairly old-fashioned material, but it never comes.
The one spark of life is a British expatriate living in the cholera country, played by Toby Jones. This is the kind of wise, world-weary character Maugham specialized in, and he’s such a relief coming after the buttoned-up Walter and Kitty, you wish the movie were told from his perspective. Jones, the tiny English actor who played Truman Capote in “Infamous,” is marvelous in the role.
Beyond that, it’s very dry. Director John Curran (“We Don’t Live Here Anymore”) gets some handsome vistas on location in China, but everything else about the treatment reinforces the feeling that we are watching an “old novel” dutifully brought to life.
The book was filmed twice before, in 1934 with Greta Garbo, and in a 1957 version called “The Seventh Sin.”
In a small role, Diana Rigg appears as a mother superior, a casting decision that should trouble fans of “The Avengers.” Naomi Watts tries hard to get something going, but the actress is as hemmed-in by the surroundings as her character is by society’s expectations.
The film is connected to the rather dour personality of Edward Norton, who brings great precision to the priggish Walter. You expect some kind of transformation in this character, but the coldness of the actor leaves the outcome an indifferent one.
Naomi Watts and Edward Norton star in “The Painted Veil.”
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