Easy Virtue
Oct. 7th, 2010 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI watched Easy Virtue last weekend and was vaguely charmed: it's funny, the sets are deliciously twenties, and the actors are all so cute.
But I've been chewing it over since, like biting on a sore tooth, and the more I think the angrier I get. It's an ugly, dishonest movie.
Our heroine is Larita, an American divorcee. She's delightful: frank, adventurous (a race car driver!), funny, comfortable in her skin - her dances sparkle, athletic, lovely, and playfully sensual. She's just married an adorable English lad, John, who takes her home to his country house to meet the family. And possibly live with them forever. Cheers!
John didn't mention the "moving home forever" idea before he and Larita married, so its perfectly fair of her to be dismayed. It is not, however, fair for the movie to be so entirely on her side. Larita's refusal to even attempt to get along with John's "priggish" gentry family is presented as entirely admirable.
To any halfway fair viewer, however, it is Larita who seems priggish. She refuses - with the air that this is all quite beneath her - to play tennis; to learn to ride a horse; to take part in their fox hunt. She's against blood sports, you see.
This avowed distaste for violence against animals makes it harder to bear when Larita accidentally kills the family dog, secretly buries its remains, and is completely unsympathetic to the howls of her husband's sisters when the corpse is found. The sisters sob uncontrollably in the background as Larita taps irritably on her cigarette: how dare they judge her for killing their beloved pet, lying about it, and not feeling remorseful when faced with her crime?
(The implication seems to be that they're making a gigantic scene about nothing - that they can't have really been fond of a stupid little yappy chihuahua, and are just making a fuss to inconvenience poor Larita. I hate this scene. If the filmmakers had thought about this for ten seconds they would realize that any fair viewing makes Larita look cruel.)
Larita is shocked - shocked! - when her avowed disdain for her husband's home and community and family curdles the feelings of all but one member of said family into hatred.
The one family member who continues to like Larita is who father-in-law, who shares her distaste for the country, the local gentry, and his family. After World War I he drifted around the whorehouses of France, then returned to his country house and spent the ensuing decade sulking in his workroom and making sarcastic comments whenever his children have feelings.
The film seems to think he's delightful. He's a jackass and I hate him. Larita is at least a lot of fun, and much of her behavior can be excused by the fact that she's under a lot of stress. Her father-in-law's only redeeming quality is that he's played by Colin Firth.
Colin Firth, I'm ashamed of you.
The story seems to be built on the assumption that the countryside is silly and the country gentry in particular is just ridiculous. It feels no need to prove, or even demonstrate, either assertion, trusting the viewers to supply the disdain for John's mother and sisters that make Larita and her father-in-law's attitudes justifiable.
Well to hell with that. The film's prejudices warp its story and twist its characters out of true, and I refuse to play along.
But I've been chewing it over since, like biting on a sore tooth, and the more I think the angrier I get. It's an ugly, dishonest movie.
Our heroine is Larita, an American divorcee. She's delightful: frank, adventurous (a race car driver!), funny, comfortable in her skin - her dances sparkle, athletic, lovely, and playfully sensual. She's just married an adorable English lad, John, who takes her home to his country house to meet the family. And possibly live with them forever. Cheers!
John didn't mention the "moving home forever" idea before he and Larita married, so its perfectly fair of her to be dismayed. It is not, however, fair for the movie to be so entirely on her side. Larita's refusal to even attempt to get along with John's "priggish" gentry family is presented as entirely admirable.
To any halfway fair viewer, however, it is Larita who seems priggish. She refuses - with the air that this is all quite beneath her - to play tennis; to learn to ride a horse; to take part in their fox hunt. She's against blood sports, you see.
This avowed distaste for violence against animals makes it harder to bear when Larita accidentally kills the family dog, secretly buries its remains, and is completely unsympathetic to the howls of her husband's sisters when the corpse is found. The sisters sob uncontrollably in the background as Larita taps irritably on her cigarette: how dare they judge her for killing their beloved pet, lying about it, and not feeling remorseful when faced with her crime?
(The implication seems to be that they're making a gigantic scene about nothing - that they can't have really been fond of a stupid little yappy chihuahua, and are just making a fuss to inconvenience poor Larita. I hate this scene. If the filmmakers had thought about this for ten seconds they would realize that any fair viewing makes Larita look cruel.)
Larita is shocked - shocked! - when her avowed disdain for her husband's home and community and family curdles the feelings of all but one member of said family into hatred.
The one family member who continues to like Larita is who father-in-law, who shares her distaste for the country, the local gentry, and his family. After World War I he drifted around the whorehouses of France, then returned to his country house and spent the ensuing decade sulking in his workroom and making sarcastic comments whenever his children have feelings.
The film seems to think he's delightful. He's a jackass and I hate him. Larita is at least a lot of fun, and much of her behavior can be excused by the fact that she's under a lot of stress. Her father-in-law's only redeeming quality is that he's played by Colin Firth.
Colin Firth, I'm ashamed of you.
The story seems to be built on the assumption that the countryside is silly and the country gentry in particular is just ridiculous. It feels no need to prove, or even demonstrate, either assertion, trusting the viewers to supply the disdain for John's mother and sisters that make Larita and her father-in-law's attitudes justifiable.
Well to hell with that. The film's prejudices warp its story and twist its characters out of true, and I refuse to play along.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 04:21 am (UTC)Pity, I did kind of want to see this movie. I have such a crush on Kris Marshall.
Also, I have been reading The Unicorn Chronicles. Need to get my hands on the 4th book.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 04:41 am (UTC)When we were living with my inlaws, I got to know one country-gentry woman. She was *wonderful* and her mother was wonderful, and her husband was wonderful, and her kids were wonderful. They were deeply deeply committed to the place and the people around them. I don't know if they went foxhunting, but they certainly rode, and they participated in local festivals, helped at the local church, etc. etc. The mom was friendly and warm to me--just like the local lady of the manor *should* be to a poor incoming lost soul. I was super grateful. Let me tell you, noblesse oblige is much, much nicer than noblesse doesn't give a damn.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 05:37 pm (UTC)If it makes you feel any better, Kris Marshall's part is totally small.
Yay Unicorn Chronicles! Are they still wonderful?
no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 06:23 pm (UTC)The gentry family you knew sounds wonderful. And it always seems to be the gentry women who are the hardest hit in fictional depictions - so unfair!