'The Painted Veil'

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

December 20, 2006

You know, going in, that "The Painted Veil" isn't going to be all flowers and candy, or even cakes and ale, based as it is on a Somerset Maugham novel. The various versions of "Rain," "The Razor's Edge," "Of Human Bondage" and even a 1934 "Painted Veil" have been based on his work. All were tough, all provocative, but none what one would necessarily call happy.

The new "Painted Veil," directed by John Curran ("We Don't Live Here Anymore") and scripted by Ron Nyswaner ("Philadelphia"), isn't an unhappy movie, but it follows a path that is quite unconventional, and very tough to pull off without a great deal of attention to emotional detail: A couple, married in a hurry and riven by infidelity, falls in love.

That it took the clout of its two stars, Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, to get it made (both are producers) is symptomatic of something, but both actors rise sublimely to the occasion. Knowing that Norton is playing British, you brace yourself: But no, he's thoroughly convincing. Watts has such innate movie-star qualities that it's always a delight to realize she's such a good actress. Her character, Kitty, is what qualifies as a near-spinster in Georgian England. So when Dr. Walter Fane proposes marriage and relocation to Shanghai, she almost has to say yes. Which is what she also says to vice consul Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber), which leads to grief, recriminations and, as part of Walter's cuckold's revenge, a trip into cholera-infested inner China.

Working with a muted palette and a fog-dampened landscape, Curran and his cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh create an Asian village that reflects the souls of the film's two principals, who wage a quiet war of unresolved anger. Walter, an infectious disease specialist, works tirelessly to keep the villagers from drinking their tainted water and from burying their dead next to their water source, as well as consoling the growing orphan population cared for by the local mother superior (Diana Rigg!). And Kitty, watching all this, realizes the good man she's married.

Toby Jones, who was Truman Capote in "Infamous," is just the kind of decadent Westerner this sometimes somber story needs. But it's really the Norton-Watts show, and they make "The Painted Veil" resonate with love and regret.