A Good Woman (2006)

Scarlett Johansson outshines Helen Hunt in this and that has never happened to shiny Helen before and Helen's been in many movies with some really gorgeous women like Jami Gertz in Twister and SJP in GJWtHF and Bette Midler in Then She Found Me and Kathleen Turner in Peggy Sue Got Married and everyone in What Women Want and everyone in Dr. T & the Women and whoever whenever wherever however whyever. Scarlett is beautiful beyond belief. I love these two women but Scarlett is a beast of an entire different nature so, don't worry Helen, you put up a strong fight but I still love you and you're not Scarlett's first victim. Scarlett began her sick killing spree/precedent of outshining her co-leading ladies onscreen in her career as just a young teenager by killing/outshining Thora Birch in Ghost World, then, Scarlett straight murdered/excessively outshone Erika Christensen in The Perfect Score, that one got a little nasty, then Scarlett really started tallying up the dead bodies/outshining everyone onscreen with DKU in ALSfBL and Helen here and Marg Helgenberger in In Good Company in 2004, poor Marg, she never stood a chance against this vicious/beautiful blonde-haired vixen, then sweet Scarlett continued to mercilessly slaughter/seriously outshine Emily Mortimer in Match Point in 2005 and then sexy Scarlett killed/outshone Rebecca Hall not once, but twice in The Prestige and in Vicky Cristina Barcelona where she also ended/outshone Penelope Cruz' life/career in a bloody double homicide/lovely simultaneous outshining performance and Scarlett's been killin' it since! Scarlett's one sick lady/the most beautiful woman!I love A Good Woman it's really sweet and kind with great acting; Helen and Scarlett make the film with good support from Tom Wilkinson!(Who knows who came out alive in 2008's The Other Boleyn Girl with Scarlett and Natalie Portman, that was a real bloodbath/epic clash between 2 all-time bright and young beautiful movie babes! Probly Scarlett)

I was excited to see a new version of Lady Windermere's Fan, because I absolutely loved the version with Helena Little (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323012/). It's a couple decades old, and it looks a little dated. You might notice there, though, that the only credited writer is Oscar Wilde, which makes sense for one of the greatest writers in the English language. What one gets here is the basic plot put into a blender with random Wilde quotes, which end up out of context and ridiculous. Of course they're still going to sound witty in any context, Wilde is just like that, but these characters sound like people trying very hard to achieve their cleverness, instead of simply having delightful conversations. It was so frustrating to see all the SENSE taken out of the writing that I had to stop watching halfway through. Plus Helen Hunt was just speaking her lines in a monotone, and Scarlett Johanson's idea of appearing innocent seems to be to just minimize her expressions as much as possible. Staring around vacantly doesn't do much to convey rigid thinking. I gave it the second star for the costumes and locations. Very pretty. Very stupid.

Why would a filmmaker make a period film, but alter the period by 30 years? What was gained by placing the story in the 1930's instead of the 1900's? Did it seem like audiences would swarm to a film placed in the 30's, but snub a film set at the turn of the century? I just don't get it.Why would a filmmaker adapt a story by a quintessentially British playwright about a quintessentially British milieu to place it in Italy rather than Britain and populate it with people who are Americans and Italians instead of British? Part of the point of Wilde's satire is, thus, completely lost.Having been enchanted by 2 adaptations of "The Importance of Being Earnest" and another adaptation of "The Ideal Husband," I eagerly anticipated "A Good Woman." I was very disappointed. The reconciliation of Tuppy and Mrs. Erlynne in the end improved my rating a point or two. The great costumes and sets are another saving grace - despite the fact that they, too, betray Wilde's original setting. The main problem is that all of the actors are portraying characters that are totally foreign to Oscar Wilde (in more ways than one). None of them is true to the roles conceived by Wilde, and essential to the creation of the comic satire he wrote! In particular, 4 of the 5 principals are waaaay too consistently earnest! No nuance. However, this doesn't seem like a problem with the acting, per se, but with the direction.I fault Helen Hunt no more than the other cast members. Her fault lies primarily in the fact that the director has misinterpreted her character and also made her an American. That's not her fault; it is the director's for changing the character. Scarlett Johansson is not terrible, either. Like Hunt, she is wrong mostly because her role is all wrong.Even the other British actors seem to be slightly off-key. Darlington is about as far off as the miscast American actors. Cecil, Dumby and Lady Plymdale come closest to capturing Wilde's spirit. But the audio and staging of many scenes makes much of their dialog difficult for an American audience to understand clearly. Among the actors, Tom Wilkinson alone impressed me. The blame for this disappointing movie can be laid squarely in the lap of the director. Beyond the poor decision to relocate the story in place and time, and beyond the decision to alter nationalities, he has completely misinterpreted Oscar Wilde. He has directed a light drama, rather than the light, comic satire written by Wilde. In Wilde's plays, all of the fun revolves around a combination of characters who take themselves too seriously, characters who are supercilious and characters who verbally amuse themselves at the expense of the others. One of Wilde's primary purposes is to satirize a certain milieu of turn-of-the-last-century British society. When the nationality of many of the characters is inexplicably altered, the satire is utterly lost. Moreover, everybody is waaaaay too serious in this film. As a result, the entire tone of the movie has nothing to do with Oscar Wilde. The soundtrack also makes this a drama rather than a comedy. The music, like the characters, is waaaaay too serious. Not a light note or a hint of comedy anywhere in the music. What a pity, I do so like Wilde's work. With the production values of this movie, it could have been really great.Either the director was attempting to transform Wilde into something he is not, or he is clueless about Wilde in the first place. I tend to believe the latter.

The name originally accorded by Oscar to this famous and most well-loved play, Lady Windermere's Fan, was the title used in this movie. This was about the only honour accorded Oscar in this woefully disappointing film.I had missed that Helen Hunt was in it, being caught up in the other good cast members I read on the sleeve - Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Campbell Moore, Diana Hardcastle. I would have given it a pass with HH in it. Once again she confirmed what an appalling one-note actress she is. She sadly came across as a two-bit whore in this and not the seductress called for in the original. Her accent was flat and uninteresting, never for a minute did you get the impression she could catch a fly - not to mention any stray man - in her web.The second piece of miscasting was in Scarlett Johansson, all trout lips and artificial shyness (get those legs waggling at the edge of the bed in anticipation of a birthday gift). The original play is a drawing room comedy, all gossip, intrigue, wit and hearsay. Here it is expanded to the Amalfi coast of Italy in the time of Mussolini in the thirties and not England in the late 1900s where it should have stayed. (Did anybody in the movie research the Italy of that era and why would the British and American be supporting a fascist regime?) Americans stand in for just about everyone so it also loses the cranky tweeness that English thoroughbreds were trained in.Here the lines (and all of Wilde's work is freely pillaged for this) sound awkward and artificial in most of the mouths, with the exception of the aforementioned Tom, Stephen and Diana who positively shine and raised this viewer's rating from a 3 to a 6. Between them they made it all worth the watch.Lovely frocks, some good outdoor shots, though they could have lost the important car of Windermere waiting in solitary splendour outside of the rooms of the town's wanton woman of the night. Oh those two by fours. Ouch and ouch again. We get it already. The gossipers had it!!