The Painted Veil (2006)

Last night, we watched a movie that Doug rented with his account. If I haven't mentioned before, we have separate accounts, because, he kept getting "guy movies." Now, I have my account and I get "chick flicks." We try, whenever possible, to watch our movies together. Painted Veil was an excellent movie for us because I love Edward Norton, (meow! Perfect at eleven years younger)(oh, hush). And, Doug loves Naomi Watts. We noticed that the movie was produced by Norton and Watts and Doug said "hey, let's make a movie and star in it!"

The movie, from the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, by the same name was shot in China. It had a cheesy tag line: "Sometimes the greatest journey is between two people." Gag me.

Naomi Watts plays Kitty Garstin. As her mother puts it "how long are you going to depend upon your father to support you?" So, they are hot to marry her off and she obliges by marrying Dr. Walter Fane (Norton) although she doesn't love him. Dr. Fane is a bacteriologist (what?) studying infectious diseases and they move to Shanghai where he is stationed to work in a government lab.

Socially, Kitty meets Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber) and has an affair with him. The man is a typical womanizer and a creep. (Yuck, bleuck, tooey!) After Walter learns of the affair, he threatens Mrs. Fane with divorce, based upon adultery naming Charlie, unless she accompanies him to the interior of China where he is to help fight the cholera epidemic. True to a player's colors, Charlie says some mumbo-jumbo about how a divorce might not be well for "his station," and Kitty accompanies Dr. Fane to the interior.

After a two week journey traveling in this style:

This is where Cheryl's favorite most obscure moment of the movie occurs - neighbor, Mr. Waddington asks if the journey was terribly arduous and Kitty Fane's response is this: "terribly." What else would she say. But I ask you - how bad can it be when you are sitting on a chair, she is sheltered from the sun and dust, give me a freakin break. It wasn't like she traveled in a Conestoga sitting behind the asses of a couple of oxen!

The most sensual scene (sensuous?) in the movie occurs with the same neighbor, with whom the Fanes develop an intimate relationship, mostly from lack of any other neighbors, or Caucasians.

Isn't that a lovely scene?

I won't give away the entire movie. You'll have to rent it to see for yourself, but I will say that I was cheering for Kitty when five years later she runs into Charles Townsend on the street of London while she has her son Walter by the hand. Charlie once again tries to make a play for her and she basically tells him to eat sand. When she and her son walk away, young Walter says "who was that, Mummy?" and Kitty replies, "no one." YAY Kitty. Men who cheat are scums.