英文影评:痴男怨女/良家妇女、一个好女人A Good Woman
发布时间：2019-08-30 17:09:38
Scarlett Johansson stars as a newlywed who encounters man-eater Helen Hunt in this Oscar Wilde adaptation set on the Amalfi coast in the 1930s
Scandalous, naughty and full of hilarious home truths about adultery, Oscar Wilde‘s play ‘Lady Windermere‘s Fan: A Play About A Good Woman‘ was something of a sensation when it was first performed in 1892. Over a century later, how things have changed. British director Mike Barker (To Kill A King) turns in a staid adaptation brightened only Wilde‘s trademark witticisms.
Updating the play to the Amalfi coast in the 1930s for no particular reason at all other than (one suspects) the demands of international co-financing, A Good Woman follows American newlyweds Lady Windermere (Johansson) and her husband Robert (Umbers) as their marriage is pushed to breaking point by coquettish man-eater Mrs Erlynne (Hunt) - a resolutely "bad" woman whose wanton ways are the talk of the town. As tongues wag and gossip spreads, Lady Windermere begins to suspect her husband of adultery, setting off a giddy chain of events that threatens to prove that "some women bring happiness wherever they go, some whenever they go". The beauty of Wilde‘s play lies in its breezy, bitchy dialogue, much of which remains intact in Howard Himelstein‘s screenplay. The laughs are welcome since the rest of the production is resolutely leaden. Barker‘s penchant for static cameras and a meticulous recreation of 1930s Amalfi sacrifice Wilde‘s playful love of artifice, while Hunt and Johansson both grapple with roles neither are quite suited to. Hunt lacks the ruthless streak her temptress ought to have, while Johansson‘s post-Lost In Translation metamorphosis into a sex symbol makes it hard to believe her turn as a priggish ingénue who‘ll only make love to her husband with the lights out.
Thankfully, the supporting cast fair much better; indeed, one of the film‘s chief pleasures is in watching Tom Wilkinson‘s rich-but-dim playboy shooting the breeze with his fellow drunken sots and casting judgement on everyone as they voice Wilde‘s fantastically cynical lines: "Bigamy is having one wife too many, same as monogamy".
Updating the play to the Amalfi coast in the 1930s for no particular reason at all other than (one suspects) the demands of international co-financing, A Good Woman follows American newlyweds Lady Windermere (Johansson) and her husband Robert (Umbers) as their marriage is pushed to breaking point by coquettish man-eater Mrs Erlynne (Hunt) - a resolutely "bad" woman whose wanton ways are the talk of the town. As tongues wag and gossip spreads, Lady Windermere begins to suspect her husband of adultery, setting off a giddy chain of events that threatens to prove that "some women bring happiness wherever they go, some whenever they go". The beauty of Wilde‘s play lies in its breezy, bitchy dialogue, much of which remains intact in Howard Himelstein‘s screenplay. The laughs are welcome since the rest of the production is resolutely leaden. Barker‘s penchant for static cameras and a meticulous recreation of 1930s Amalfi sacrifice Wilde‘s playful love of artifice, while Hunt and Johansson both grapple with roles neither are quite suited to. Hunt lacks the ruthless streak her temptress ought to have, while Johansson‘s post-Lost In Translation metamorphosis into a sex symbol makes it hard to believe her turn as a priggish ingénue who‘ll only make love to her husband with the lights out.
Thankfully, the supporting cast fair much better; indeed, one of the film‘s chief pleasures is in watching Tom Wilkinson‘s rich-but-dim playboy shooting the breeze with his fellow drunken sots and casting judgement on everyone as they voice Wilde‘s fantastically cynical lines: "Bigamy is having one wife too many, same as monogamy".