Oscar Wilde's witty play Lady Windermere's Fan has been fast-forwarded to the 1930s and the Amalfi coast of Italy by screenwriter Howard Himelstein and director Mike Barker. Mrs. Stella Erlynne (Helen Hunt) makes a living seducing wealthy men who are married. She checks out the scene in New York and finds that it is time to move on to Italy. There she gains access to Robert Windermere (Mark Umbers) who has just married Meg (Scarlett Johansson). They have been taken under the wing of the Duchess of Berwick (Milena Vukotic) who is an unrelenting gossip. Other members of this wealthy expatriate community include Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore), who is attracted to Meg, and Lord Augustus (Tom Wilkinson), who fancies Mrs. Erlynne. It doesn't take the Duchess very long to discover the liaison between the American scarlet woman and the handsome Robert. Soon many tongues are twittering and surprises abounding: this is essential in any drama by Oscar Wilde who once noted: "It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." Both kinds of people populate this story.
There are a great number of quotable lines in this sprightly version of Wilde's first produced play, including: "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." Helen Hunt stumbles here and there in her portrait of the seductive woman who is branded as an outsider as soon as she sets foot in this Italian watering spot for the rich. Tom Wilkinson manages to engage our sympathy more than anyone else in the story as a wealthy man with a good heart who knows his limitations. A Good Woman is sure to please movie-goers who have a yen for costume dramas with clever lines on the complications of love and marriage.
Special DVD Features include a commentary by director Mike Barker and the producer.
