Wondrous Virtue Easy to Love
After watching her win a motorcar race, dashing Briton John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) falls in love with and impetuously marries the free-spirited and beautiful Larita (Jessica Beil), taking her home to his country estate to meet what he thinks will be an ecstatic family. What he finds is a didactic mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) who takes an instant dislike to the young woman, a still shell-shocked WWI veteran father (Colin Firth) unwilling to offer up a boisterous defense of his son’s decision and two sisters, Hilda (Kimberley Nixon) and Marion (Katherine Parkinson), afraid to stand up to mum’s opinion.
Ben Barnes and Jessica Biel get closer in Sony Pictures Classics' Easy Virtue
A battle of wills soon erupts, Mrs. Whittaker determined to undermine her new stepdaughter’s hold over her beloved son. But Larita isn’t going to go down without a fight, remaining as calm as she can while engineering witty counter attacks the older woman never seems to see coming. Unfortunately, even though she keeps winning battles it becomes more and more apparent her and John’s love might not be able to survive the continuous onslaught intent on smothering it out of existence.
Based on the play by Noël Coward, Easy Virtue is a wondrous joy filled with mirth, merriment, wit, energy and sass. It also has a bracingly moving emotional undercurrent, a specter of regret and loss hiding just below the surface allowing the film to pack a moving punch that eventually brought me to tears. It is a delightful import, and as the long-awaited return to the director’s chair by The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert auteur Stephan Elliott I’m happy to proclaim it a success.
Admittedly, it does have its bumpy spots, and like the filmmaker’s past efforts there are times his joyous eccentricity can almost get the best of him. The shifts in tone can feel sudden and forced, while other quirks, while good in and of themselves (such as the wonderful musical soundtrack), have the unfortunate side effect of taking the focus off the story and shifting it towards a technical facet viewers shouldn’t be noticing.
Not that any of this stuff bothered me very much. While there are some bumps in the road, Easy Virtue is such an enjoyable little ride I almost didn’t notice them. Beil just gets better and better (and is quickly becoming deserving of far better roles than the ones she keeps getting offered), while young Barnes rebounds nicely from his stiff, almost lifeless bit of work in last Summer’s
