Tasteful, artful, generally faithful treatment of the Edith Wharton novel. If it naturally lacks the "personal" quality of Terence Davies's autobiographical work — Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes — it at least earns him credit for having selected a first-rate piece of literature. And it does not altogether lack the "studio" quality of, in particular, The Long Day Closes, one of the last great landmarks of sound-stage illusionism. Though there is never a feeling of penury in the production, neither is there a feeling of ostentatious display — a fine line to tread in a clear-eyed portrait of New York gentility circa 1905. And wherever there is corner-cutting (e.g., the completely tented-in yacht deck, with only a few spidery shadows through the translucent cloth to suggest a boat and a bay beyond the deck chairs on center-stage), there is always ample imagination to compensate. Always, that is, in matters visual. Storytelling is another matter. The tragicomedy of the luxury-loving Lily Bart, too spirited to settle for a dull husband and too spoiled to settle for any less than a wealthy one, is here tipped sharply toward the tragic side and away from the comic; and the heroine registers more purely as victim than as equal accomplice. This can be attributed in large part to the absence of the author's tart tone of voice and the substitution of the filmmaker's dolorous temperament. Davies has adapted the novel himself — a tall order by any measure — and there is often a lack of transition, to say nothing of breathing room, between one dialogue and the next, so that the grimness of the heroine's situation and the desperation in her demeanor descend upon us at free-fall speed. Wharton's great achievement was, among other things, to make the course of the narrative seem both inevitable and unnecessary. Davies, working his way to a simpler and heavier-handed outcome, makes it seem nothing but a crying shame. Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Dan Aykroyd, Anthony LaPaglia, Laura Linney, Jodhi May, Eleanor Bron, Elizabeth McGovern. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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