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James Ivory’s The
White Countess is a moving romance set against the backdrop of the
gathering war clouds, while director Lasse Hallstorm in An Unfinished
Life weaves an absorbing story of the misconceptions to be ironed
out in human relations. Ervell E. Menezes takes
a look at the two films
Hollywood doesn’t get behind the Bamboo Curtain too often. The Keys of the Kingdom (Gregory Peck as the priest) was probably my first taste of China. More recently we’ve had The Sand Pebbles and The Last Emperor. The latest foray is by James Ivory’s The White Countess, a moving romance set against the backdrop of the gathering war clouds that would eventually herald World War II. The year is 1936, the city Shanghai where nightlife was probably comparable to Beirut of the 1960s. Bars and restaurants played all that jazz, bar girls doubled up as hostesses and life was lived full size. The White Countess was an elegant bar-restaurant started by a blind American diplomat Todd Jackson (Ralph Fiennes) who called his bar girl and former Russian Countess Sofia (Miranda Richardson) his centrepiece. They had both come down in life. His failure to initiate world peace at the League of Nations had put him into the political wilderness. She was forced to flee Russia because of the advent of Communism and enter the world’s oldest profession. "All of us have to fall in love from time to time to feed our children and sisters," is her way of putting it but she kept it all away from her cute child Katya (Madeline Daly). "I can see it all here," says the blind Jackson pointing to his forehead. A gambling man, he used his winnings to set up the The White Countess. Of the women in business, he said "you need a balance between the erotic and the tragic." As for running it he had his priorities right. "If you have a good team of bouncers you can conduct the place like an orchestra," he said. In fact that was what he was doing. His only misnomer is pampering a dubious Japanese gentleman named Matsuda (Hiroyuki Sanada), who was known to be a harbinger of war. Reminiscent of Cabaret (though that was Germany), the music sets the tone but the undercurrents are palpable. In this arid, tense setting love blooms, but a love that is cerebral. The pace is easy, typical James Ivory style one is quite accustomed to by now. Be it A Room With a View or Remains of the Day, the style is unmistakable, and the fare absorbing, all 138 minutes of it. Of course there is the rare burst of temper or action that stands out by contrast. If one has to find fault it is with the ending, which is rather too Hindi-filmi. But this can be overlooked in the light of the overall handling of the subject and the ambience. Ralph Fiennes (pronounced Rafe Fiennes to rhyme with wines) is brilliant as the blind diplomat in full control of his feelings for most of the time and Miranda Richardson underplays a deeply emotional role. These two dominate the action and are yet at no time jarring. There are good cameos by Hiroyuki Sanada and Madeline Daly. Miranda’s mother Vanessa Redgrave and her sister Lynn (brilliant in Georgy Girl in the late-1960s) are purely academic in this charming, not-to-be-missed romantic period piece.
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