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Amos Lassen wrote on 03/02/2010:

“A Good Woman”

Wilde and Reworked

Amos Lassen

Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan” has been reworked into a modern film. It is no longer set in the drawing rooms of 1890 London but moved to the 1930’s to Amalfi. It is still the story of a young couple and their marital misunderstandings and still has some of the great Wilde wit but the cast messes up some of the original script. The play was first staged in 1892 and it is not really suited for the screen and this is the problem. The characters are artificial and the dialog that was once so sharp and witty has lost something over time.
Basically this is the story of a society grande dame trying to re-enter a world she left years before Helen Hunt is the elegant but poor Mrs. Erlynne who doesn’t pay her bills and hocks her jewelry to buy a ticket to Italy. On the boat she looks up New York society newlyweds, Robert (Mark Umbers) and Meg (Scarlett Johansson) Windermere who are vacationing on the Italian Riviera. The photography of Amalfi is stunning and the period is nicely brought to us by a chorus of rich people including Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson) and Lady Plymdale (Diana Hardcastle) as well as an invented countess played by Milena Vukotic). The new Mrs. Windermere is being moved on by Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore) while Robert is somewhat enamored of Erlynne as is Tuppy.
The colors of the film are glorious but that does not help the script and what might have been a wonderful film is washed upon the coast of Italy. I am a great fan of Wilde and I really wanted to like this film but it just did not happen. I found the movie to move slowly and the cast just did fit the roles. I suppose it is very difficult to make Wilde relevant today and since most of us are aware of that, I wonder why people even try to do so.