(Rated M for moderate themes and sexual references)
 
It’s the early 20th century and a British MD turned bacteriologist named Walter Fane (played by Edward Norton) is on holidays back in England (he works for the Poms in China), when he’s smitten by the pretty, if vacuous and self-centred, Kitty (Naomi Watts).

Fane, a fairly buttoned down sort of science nerd, plights his troth and Kitty takes him up on his offer of matrimony, mainly to get away from her Visigoth of a mother who thinks ol’ Kitty’s marry-by date is almost up. The downside is that Kitty barely knows Walter, let alone loves him.

When the newly weds hit China it quickly becomes apparent they aren’t compatible. Walter is studious and stares at his microscope more than his missus; Kitty loves tennis, dancing the theatre and all manner of frivolity.

Kitty is seduced by sleazy British diplomat Charlie (Liev Schreiber, Watts’ real-life husband). Hubby Walter finds out in a quiet rage and gives Kitty an ultimatum: go through the scandal of divorce as a scarlet woman or accompany him to the centre of a raging cholera epidemic. It’s not the most attractive of choices but Kitty stands by her man and enters a plague-ridden region rather than suffer the stigma of divorce. 

The unhappy couple deals with their relationship alongside the daily death of Chinese adults and children in and out of a catholic nunnery serving as a hospital. The setting offers various possibilities of redemption.

Dinner parties in England, cocktails and adultery in Shanghai and gut-wrenching cholera in the deep inner regions of China's interior—it's a curious mix. This is a combination of historical romance, chick flick, darkly comedic take on relationships and political homily on the age of empire, Mostly it’s a cleverly conceived morality play.

The 'painted veil' reference in the film’s title has nothing to do with the film’s scenery or plotlines. (The movie is based on revered British novelist Somerset Maugham's work of the same name, it’s actually the third film version of his 1925 book.) But the title, which talks about the pretenses between human beings, is actually a quote from a sonnet by the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley:

‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it--he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.’

Pretty, huh?
 
This is a beautifully shot film; and the cinematography, together with a beautiful score featuring the Prague Symphony Orchestra, electric cellist Vincent Segal, and virtuoso pianist Lang Lang, helps drive the movie onwards and upwards.

Director John Curran has actually got this big bikkies American film shot in China, which is a big accomplishment. It is beautiful countryside, beautifully captured and the stronger for being set against a hideous disease that kills people by dehydrating them.

On a lighter side, Ed Norton, the Fight Club legend who has not put a foot wrong since his debut alongside Richard Gere in the 1996 courtroom drama Primal Fear, is perfection here alongside Naomi Watts (with an honourable mention for second banana, local Pommy consul Waddington, played by Toby Jones).

Norton’s not known for bunging on non-Yankee tones, but his British accent here is note-perfect. We expect that from modern Aussie actors, it is a rare accomplishment among US thesps.
 
The underlying message of the film, as the wizened old Mother Superior (Diana Rigg) tells Kitty, is that 'when duty and love are one, grace lives within'.
 
The source of the film, ol’ Maugham, reckoned the only love that lasts is the unrequited variety; this film toys with that kind of despondency but offers genuine hope that this need not be so.

This is the best arthousey, Merchant Ivory flick since The English Patient. Enjoy this while ye may.

A bit of historical trivia for you: Watts’ role was first played by none other than Greta Garbo, in 1934.

Barry Gittins