The Painted Veil (2006)

It’s the 1920s and Kitty (Naomi Watts), a flighty, self-willed English socialite is no longer a spring chicken and a bit of a burden to her family. Painfully aware of this, she impulsively marries Dr Walter Fain (Edward Norton), a microbiologist based in Shanghai.

Walter is the kind of bloke who before sex neatly arranges slippers in front of the bed and turns the lights off. He tries really hard but has no luck keeping Kitty interested or entertained for long. Much more successful is Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber), the dashing (and also married) vice consul who helps Kitty alleviate the ennui in China by way of some bedroom action. She even fancies they are in love.

Walter finds out about the affair, and transforms instantly from Mr Nice Guy to a major jerk. He presents Kitty with an ultimatum. He’ll divorce her loudly and publicly citing adultery or she can come with him to a far flung region of China where he has volunteered to go help contain an outbreak of cholera. She is forced into choosing the latter.

After a 10 day journey, they arrive to a remote village, ravaged by cholera. The town well is contaminated, westerners are far from popular, humidity is unbearable and the couple become consumed in a dangerous game of one-upmanship. He won’t get immunised, so she won’t either. She’s happy to eat the possibly contaminated lettuce, so he eats it as well.

Eventually, Kitty starts to soften, desperate for companionship, but Walter has been wounded too deeply to forgive easily.

Don’t worry if you think I’ve just given half the movie away. This all basically happens in the first 15 minutes and the rest of it depicts how the cold, unhappy marriage gradually turns into a loving one.  Yes, the romance in this movie is between the husband and the wife, and not the wife and the lover (a bit radical, eh?).

I had no expectation for The Painted Veil, heard no hype about it – good or bad, and seen none of the previous versions of the story. While not amazing, it was a pleasant little discovery. The stunning Chinese backdrop and the love story had me totally sucked in, but then I am rather partial to a good period romance.

I normally find Watts a bit ordinary, I’ve never seen her in anything I couldn’t imagine five other actresses doing it just as well, if not better. She doesn’t necessarily sway that opinion with this role, but that’s not to say she isn’t effective and there is a definite chemistry between the two leads. It is a credit to them that the two originally unsympathetic characters are skilfully transformed into ones we care for by the end of the movie.