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| Movies,
Justin Harries,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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House of Mirth sees Liverpudlian director Terrence Davis forsaking his autobiographical roots to present Edith Wharlton's tragic tale of high society hypocrisy in turn of the century New York.
Accustomed to the gloom is Gillian Anderson, playing heroine Lily Bart, a young, cute socialite in dire need of a husband to sustain her increasingly precarious reputation. Unfortunately Lily has neither the cunning nor guile to guide through the treacherous maze that is husband hunting. Instead, repressing her love for an unsuitable suitor, informed by a hazy independence and betrayed by backstabbing rivals, she lets things slip, never grasping or using the opportunities that could have ensured the continuation of her privileged existence. By the films finale stages she has sunk to the the level of the working class (oh the horror), and finding herself inept at even the most modest of professions, it's not long before shes glugging down one too many from the medicine bottle and contemplating a form of blackmail.
One of the most curious elements to the film is the amount of sympathy we are meant to assign to Lily. OK, the story is tragic, and generally the people around her are utter shits, but the apathy and incompetence Lily shows is reflective of the only world that she can exist in. The rich, spoilt, repressed pigs seemingly only capable of dealing with a stylised reality, bury their world under a blanket of signs and code - and yet this is the world Lily longs to belong to. The tragedy of her story is that she is incapable of seeing the world to be any different.
Anderson, master of the Spock-like arched eyebrow, does a good job in conveying naivety and innocence in the essentially good natured Lily. Laure Linnely does better as über-bitch Bertha Dorset, Lily's nemesis and ultimate destroyer. Stoltz, as Bertha's ex and Lily's near salvation, fares less well, confined to hovering and smoking cigarettes rather stiffly. I didn't really believe his declaration of love at the close, but maybe this is just indicative of the closed emotions of the piece. Unlike other Terrence Davis movies these guys get to do a lot of yakking, apart from one long elegant transition sequence, this is rather an austere, static piece, albeit bathed with Remi Adefarasins luminous cinematography, that sinks, with Lily, to a gloomy half light. Less sumptuous than a Merchant Ivory, and eschewing the food of Martin Scorcese, Davis concentrates on the manners and false morality of a decadent and restrictive society. Although a little studied, his approach does wring emotion from text, stifled in the confines of the upper classes, it gives way to an melancholic gloom that had me feeling bad for days. Mission accomplished.
UK rating:
PG
US rating:
PG
Terence Davies 2000 UK
Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Dan Aykroyd, Eleanor Bron, Terry Kinney, Anthony LaPaglia, Laura Linney, Jodhi May, Elizabeth McGovern
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