Coward-ly Lioness | Jessica Biel bewitches Colin Firth as the band strikes up a tango in Easy Virtue.
EASY VIRTUE
Directed by Stephan Elliott. Starring Jessica Biel, Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Barnes. Opens Fri, June 12.
**1/2
For a reviewer, the only thing worse than a bad movie is an okay movie. The real question becomes, not what to say, but why say more? I mean, why use 500 words to critique Easy Virtue when I only need one: meh. Of course, if I don’t come up with some filler, there will be a giant blank spot next to the review of Metro Cinema’s Miklós Jancsó retrospective. And I guess, dear reader, forgetting the film’s title, you could stumble into a dark theatre unawares and spend an hour and a half on mediocrity, which is so beige it’s barely worth a tweet (or a mention around the water cooler if you’re still stuck in 1993). So I’d better do some fleshing out…
In Easy Virtue, Jessica Biel finally gets a crack at a leading role in this adaptation of Noël Coward’s 1924 play of the same name. It’s a chance for Biel to splinter the alternating images we have of her as a 7th Heaven sweetheart and her rebellious magazine spread phase, and replace them with sexy spitfire Larita Whittaker, a female race car driver, outspoken freethinker, city slicker, and, her worst offence, American, Whittaker must adjust to life in the English countryside and win over her mother-in-law (Kristin Scott Thomas) when she marries boy-ingénue, Jon Whittaker (Ben Barnes). Larita is older and, ahem, more experienced than her new husband, and Jon’s priggish family gets their knickers in a twist over her mere presence. All of them, that is, except, Mr. Whittaker (Colin Firth), who respects Larita’s spunk.
All in all, Biel acquits herself pretty well. And that’s not to damn with faint praise. She’s sassy and wrings out a few laughs with the help of the supporting cast, notably the stoic butler and gruff gardener. I personally enjoyed it when she sat on Mrs. Whittaker’s yappy dog and the three of them conspire to bury the thing in the rosebushes. Yeah, it’s a cliché (when, exactly, haven’t movie butlers been stoic?) but it’s the kind of mischief these BBC period pieces always get up to and they’re really rather good at making it amusing.
I must admit, however, that I’ve never quite understood the cliché of the “adventurous city-girl who can’t make it in the country,” especially when there are horses to ride and sports to try and a world of brooks, hills, and dales to explore. At one point, Larita’s new husband mumbles, “She could at least make an effort.” And she could! A gal who can’t hack a few months in the country isn’t too wild for the simple life but too pampered for the wilderness. It’s not very winning.
In the end, though, this role is more than Biel can handle. Larita is meant to be a force of nature, and perhaps only another force of nature could ever hope to rein in such a character. While Biel can sparkle, she’s not sunshine itself.
Firth does as much with his character as he’s given the screen time to do, and the vague references to his past life as a solider explaining his current detached disposition aren’t so much his problem as the script’s. The rest of the cast does their best, too, but there’s nothing that can wake the film up, even the anachronistic soundtrack that director Stephan Elliott throws in to, I don’t know, modernize the film.
So as I said: not good, not bad, just okay. And I have nothing more to say.
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