The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil is a film that tries too hard. It wants to be a romantic, heroic, epic story but can’t quite manage to scale those heights. Its main characters are too self-absorbed to exhibit any true chemistry. Edward Norton imbues the bacteriologist-doctor Walter Fane with a convincing stereotypically waspish, stiffly repressed personality. As a result, the romantic hero is barely likeable, which certainly puts a damper on the romantic plot-line. Naomi Watts’ character, Kitty Fane, is vain, selfish and spoiled. And those are her good points. She throws herself into an adulterous affair with the caddish Liev Schrieber before the honeymoon bed is cold.

The heroic plot line isn’t more convincing. Dr. and Mrs. Fane dispatch themselves with suicidal fury into the middle of a cholera epidemic. Of course, despite their brazen attempts to appear ridiculously courageous, neither is infected until they discover their purpose. And their love.

The epic storyline becomes the most effective. The exotically beautiful and dangerously toxic setting of China in the 1920's provides an intriguing background. The paradox of colonialism is portrayed with appropriate complexity, its condescending oppressive nature played off against its ability to provide aid in dire circumstances.

Some of the film’s secondary characters seem one-dimensional. The mysterious Waddington (just what does he do?) is at first a symbol of oppressive colonialism, his Chinese concubine kept naked and compliant. Of course, things are not as they seem, but the character’s initial creepiness is never completely overcome. The enigmatic Colonel Yu is played as a symbol of China itself, distrustful and yearning for independence, but able to accept help when his hand is forced.

The film’s best scene happens almost by accident, illustrating a quirky, previously unseen component of Dr. Fane’s personality, as he counts the distance required to divert a secondary source of water for the village. He is a likeable hero for a moment, perhaps capturing the true emotion of the story as written by W. Somerset Maugham. But the scene fades, and the viewer is left, ultimately, with an epic and empty melodrama.