SnoopyStyle It's 1930. Infamous Mrs. Erlynne (Helen Hunt) is chased out of New York high society. She sets eyes on Amalfi, Italy and newly wed Robert Windemere (Mark Umbers). The scandal follows her. Rumors spread affecting his young wife Meg (Scarlett Johansson). She thinks he's having an affair but in reality, Erlynne is secretly Meg's mother unbeknownst to her and Robert has been paying her to keep that secret. Lord Augustus (Tom Wilkinson) falls for the fascinating American Erlynne.I don't know anything about the Oscar Wilde play. It seems to me that Erlynne is an outrageous American bombshell. Helen Hunt is not quite that character. She has a modernity that doesn't easily come off. It's a light affair with a glow that is two setting too bright. All the British actors seem to be from Masterpiece Theater. I can buy a young Johnansson but Hunt is pushing it.

secondtake A Good Woman (2004)This has all the earmarks of a serious drama with strains of smart humor, and of a period setting that would be evocative and beautiful.It's also a charming idea. Some rich and rather idling types all looking for happiness and love and maybe some sex on the side are sidling up together in the little coastal Italian village where everything is quite isolated and devastatingly beautiful. Things naturally happen, as they would in any Edwardian novel (though this is just post-Edwardian, technically--around 1930). In a way, this milieu is enough to keep you watching. I know I watched it all through, even though sometimes I would rather have been watching something better.In truth, "A Good Woman" has a clumsy and sometimes even simplistic script (among characters who are rich, erudite, clever expatriates--highly unlikely). To make this worse, it's based on an excellent Oscar Wilde play. Somehow the bite, and wit, and smarts all get lost.Then the whole thing is directed and edited without grace or sensitivity. Even the tricky title (the woman it implies is not who you think at first) leads to a slim and rather improbable twist. It strives, it has the right idea, but it will strike most people as a little off or downright boring.Put another way--it's a cross between a Woody Allen film (it even starts with 20s music and white text on black background) and a Merchant-Ivory kind of nostalgic period film. Either would have been fabulous. Neither rises to the top, and some terrific moments and decent filming (camerawork) are swamped by the awkward construction and direction (by Mike Barker, a t.v. director with a short resume).Not that the plot won't make sense. In a way it makes too much sense. The big mystery is no big deal when revealed. The jokes are sort of funny. The crossed lovers and crossed signals (several of them) and overheard conversations are wonderfully Shakespearean, but it only goes that far.What does work best is Scarlett Johansson in the leading role as an American expat in this vivid Italian city on the Amalfi coast. (In a nice twist, it was set in the actual village of Amalfi, where I visited just six months ago, and I think most of the filming occurred there. That much was a thrill.) Johansson had enough subtlety to make her scenes hold up. Oddly, Helen Hunt, who can be quite sharp on screen, came off as trying too hard. I'll blame the script for that. You can only do so much with so little. But then, on the same token, Tom Wilkinson playing an older rich man looking for another try at marriage makes his lines really sparkle, with the same script. So, keep expectations in check. Look for some good acting amidst some paltry stuff (including the two key leading young men, both of whom don't radiate a bit, and need to). And enjoy all the rich partying in a paradise from Italy's past. I think the wikipedia entry for the movie is spot on, especially some great reviewer's quotes from the time.

lythea-1 I was excited to see a new version of Lady Windermere's Fan, because I absolutely loved the version with Helena Little (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323012/). It's a couple decades old, and it looks a little dated. You might notice there, though, that the only credited writer is Oscar Wilde, which makes sense for one of the greatest writers in the English language. What one gets here is the basic plot put into a blender with random Wilde quotes, which end up out of context and ridiculous. Of course they're still going to sound witty in any context, Wilde is just like that, but these characters sound like people trying very hard to achieve their cleverness, instead of simply having delightful conversations. It was so frustrating to see all the SENSE taken out of the writing that I had to stop watching halfway through. Plus Helen Hunt was just speaking her lines in a monotone, and Scarlett Johanson's idea of appearing innocent seems to be to just minimize her expressions as much as possible. Staring around vacantly doesn't do much to convey rigid thinking. I gave it the second star for the costumes and locations. Very pretty. Very stupid.

newday98074 Somewhere in the 6.5 to 7 range. Neither female lead seemed to fit their parts. Hunt either chose or was directed into a flat performance, I suppose to simulate a woman with toughness, but her actions and reactions often seemed brittle and unreal. Johansson is simply miscast and that's not her fault. The story/editing broke her performance into pieces so that an understanding of who her character was never happened. I never felt I understood her or a cared about her. The witticisms are funny but are delivered seemingly out of the body of the movie, like one-liners that had nothing to do with the rest of it. The film is pretty, costumes fit, most performance are fine, but as a whole the movie didn't work for me.