Stephan Elliott’s Easy Virtue, based on Noel Coward’s 1925 play, offers further evidence that the peculiar world of affluent country life in Britain between the First and Second World Wars persists as an object of both fascination and scorn. Elliot has certainly produced a much closer adaptation than the 1928 silent version (the second film Alfred Hitchcock directed), which only had one original line on its title cards. The story introduces us to newlyweds John (Ben Barnes, Stardust) and Larita (Jessica Biel, The Illusionist), a vivacious American race-car driver, as they arrive at his family’s estate in the English countryside, which is presided over by his mother, the stern Mrs. Whitaker (Kristin Scott-Thomas), who is none too impressed with his son’s taste in brides and makes no secret of her disdain. Meanwhile her husband the Colonel Whitaker (Colin Firth), an unkempt and exhausted-looking man, seems to find in his new daughter-in-law a much needed breath of fresh air.

The rest of the film depicts the war (the characters describe it in those terms) between Larita and her stuffy in-laws, a war fought as much with Coward’s trademark witticisms as with Machiavelli’s strategems. Kristin Scott-Thomas is fun to watch, but her character never really becomes much more than a vessel for sardonic derision. Biel has been called by many critics “too modern” for the role, but I think they miss the point, and her performance is quite subtle and even poignant at times. Firth is a pleasure to watch in anything he does, of course.

This adaptation has major flaws, however. It blasts its inappropriately jazzy soundtrack (one song seems to refer anachronistically to spy satellites) insistently, and the editing feels a bit sloppy in general. The whole affair seems a bit flighty at first–even, for brief moments, threatening to become a full-blown musical. But much like last year’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, it opens as a scatterbrained farce and closes on a more sober note. In between, it can’t seem to decide whether it wants to be a P.G. Wodehouse-esque drawing-room comedy or a Hemingway-esque world-weary tragedy. – [DVD]

Comedy/Romance

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 9/15/09

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