I haven't read "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton yet, but I intend to now. This movie interpretation captured Wharton's acidity towards NY society more than Scorcese's "Age of Innocence" did, which focused more on personal failings.
Here a magnificently beautiful Gillian Anderson's character is stupid and stubborn, but doesn't really do anything wrong that society manipulates and revenges on her. She is absolutely superb with a very wide-ranging performance and it's a real shame she's being overlooked in end of the year awards.
The costumes are absolutely gorgeous. Having worked at a Hudson River estate museum I thought the movie absolutely captured the feeling of those hazy summers out of the city then was astounded to see it was all filmed in Scotland (which would explain the rocky coasts that were the only thing that confusingly didn't look like the Hudson).
The long movie is a bit slow and I think my mind wandered such that I missed a crucial plot point here or there - not sure we needed all the twinkling on the water shots.
Laura Linney plays against type as a practically evil duplicitous friend (worse than her wife in "The Truman Show").
It was interesting to compare this to Jane Austen interpretations which tend to emphasize the humor of her pot shots at silly society figures, but those folks were in small towns, not the big leagues where raised eyebrows affect fortunes. For society types, this is The Show.
Ebert (and my mother) gave it negative reviews because they absolutely refused to believe that a woman in her social class in 1906 had no other choices besides marriage but I think it was historically accurate, as Wharton was writing, bitterly, about a society she had observed (in a line from George Eliot to Hardy's Tess and Crane's Maggie). The women coming out of the theater agreed that we'd want to see it again.
(originally written 1/28/2001)
