The Painted VeilCan two people driven to hate one another after betrayal and heartbreak still find fulfillment in each other's company? The Painted Veil is a drama about a newly married couple: the pampered and selfish Kitty Garstin Fane (Naomi Watts), whose principal passion is playing the piano, and her bacteriologist husband, Walter Fane (Edward Norton), who is so shy and socially awkward that he comes across as aloof. After Walter proposes to Kitty--who accepts only to escape her humdrum life in London--they journey to Shanghai; Walter begins studying virulent diseases, while their marriage begins to disintegrate.
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The Painted Veil is adapted from the novel of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham, and opens in the wilderness of China in the year 1925. Kitty and Walter look the part of a mutually dejected couple as they make their long trek to a remote village called Mei-tan-fu, which has recently been struck by an outbreak of cholera. The relationship between Kitty and Walter is explored in a series of flashbacks that relate both their unlikely marriage as well as the root of their bad blood--an affair Kitty had with a married diplomat named Charles "Charlie" Townsend (Liev Schreiber). Their first encounter between Walter and Kitty was two years prior in London, where she all but ignores him like a snobby teenager. Walter comes to court her later and takes her on a walk to a flower shop, where he blurts out his nervous proposal like he was ripping off a bandage. Neither Kitty nor Walter have any real magic between them, and neither marriage nor moving to China changes this; Walter immerses himself in his studies and Kitty is bored in a foreign city. Sleeping with Charlie has nothing to do with love, but comes from Kitty's ennui and to spite Walter. When Walter reveals his knowledge of her adultery, he doesn't burst forth with passionate anger; his ultimatum is that she accompany him to Mei-tan-fu comes under threat of divorce, which would leave her humiliated and without connections in an unfamiliar world away from home. Walter imposes unattractive contingencies on the divorce offer, believing that he can manipulate her into coming with him; this is because he doesn't really respect her since she is not as well-educated as he is. Kitty tries to convince Charlie to divorce his wife and marry her instead. Charlie responds that can never enter a committed relationship with an adulteress, because he expects to find himself made a cuckold later, forcing Kitty to acknowledge that she has lost the respect of both her husband and her lover. The tragedy of their marriage is that neither of them wanted to marry out of love--Walter only tells himself that he loves Kitty because be believes that he is of an age when he should be married, but doesn't even allow for the time for a full courtship. The intense hate they show each other is really a reflection of how angry they are at themselves for their own foolishness and immaturity, playing at love without reading the rules first.
Their time in Mei-tan-fu forces Kitty and Walter to reconsider their superficial motivations in leaving modern civilization and running the risk of being afflicted with a deadly plague. There are moments that tease that Walter is looking for a convenient way to kill his wife, like how Walter deigns to offer inoculations to Kitty (and ostensibly himself), drawing comparisons between The Painted Veil and Suspicion, Alfred Hitchcock's thriller about a wife's dread of uxoricide. The Painted Veil gets its title from a scene where Kitty and Walter are attending a Chinese theater performance, where she first encounters Charlie, who feeds her a story about the meaning of the stage play they do not understand. Charlie says that the veil that the crying woman wears is meant to wipe away the tears of being forcibly placed in a world she doesn't understand. Kitty identifies with the story, but misses key details due to her egomania; she wasn't dragged away from England--she came of her own accord and played carelessly with Walter's heart. Subsequently, "painted" comes to represent the artifice of her petulant youth and selfishness, which is wiped away like theater makeup during her stay in Mei-tan-fu. Her comparatively bleak new home is on the outskirts of the town, where Kitty finds herself all but a prisoner. She is guarded by a well-meaning Chinese nationalist, and the plague and escalating tensions between the Europeans occupying China and the natives further deters her from venturing into the city. When Kitty and Walter are together, their dialogue is terse at best--his only comments are about how busy he is trying to resolve the disease ravaging the town. Walter's efforts to curtail the spread of cholera includes some impromptu engineering and even political bargaining with a local warlord. He is begrudgingly aided by Colonel Yu (Anthony Wong Chau Sang), who makes it clear that he will maintain order yet despises a Westerner coming into his country and ordering him and his people around. Following a conversation with her new neighbor--a fellow Englishman named Waddington (Toby Jones)--Kitty concludes that she needs purpose in her life, and begins by volunteering at the town's Catholic missionary, with the permission of the Mother Superior (Diana Rigg). Kitty discovers depth of feeling by helping the orphaned children whose parents died due to the plague. Her heart softens toward Walter, turning her hatred into regret, because it took this dramatic and dangerous journey for them to become the people they truly wanted each other to be.
Recommended for: Fans of a wistful period piece about the dangers of seeking marriage only to satisfy one's own ego, and the wisdom that follows from acknowledging the error. Most of The Painted Veil is about the acrimony between Kitty and Walter, yet the film transforms into a romance as they come to accept their responsibility for the one another's pain, building a stronger bridge between them from the wreckage.
Their time in Mei-tan-fu forces Kitty and Walter to reconsider their superficial motivations in leaving modern civilization and running the risk of being afflicted with a deadly plague. There are moments that tease that Walter is looking for a convenient way to kill his wife, like how Walter deigns to offer inoculations to Kitty (and ostensibly himself), drawing comparisons between The Painted Veil and Suspicion, Alfred Hitchcock's thriller about a wife's dread of uxoricide. The Painted Veil gets its title from a scene where Kitty and Walter are attending a Chinese theater performance, where she first encounters Charlie, who feeds her a story about the meaning of the stage play they do not understand. Charlie says that the veil that the crying woman wears is meant to wipe away the tears of being forcibly placed in a world she doesn't understand. Kitty identifies with the story, but misses key details due to her egomania; she wasn't dragged away from England--she came of her own accord and played carelessly with Walter's heart. Subsequently, "painted" comes to represent the artifice of her petulant youth and selfishness, which is wiped away like theater makeup during her stay in Mei-tan-fu. Her comparatively bleak new home is on the outskirts of the town, where Kitty finds herself all but a prisoner. She is guarded by a well-meaning Chinese nationalist, and the plague and escalating tensions between the Europeans occupying China and the natives further deters her from venturing into the city. When Kitty and Walter are together, their dialogue is terse at best--his only comments are about how busy he is trying to resolve the disease ravaging the town. Walter's efforts to curtail the spread of cholera includes some impromptu engineering and even political bargaining with a local warlord. He is begrudgingly aided by Colonel Yu (Anthony Wong Chau Sang), who makes it clear that he will maintain order yet despises a Westerner coming into his country and ordering him and his people around. Following a conversation with her new neighbor--a fellow Englishman named Waddington (Toby Jones)--Kitty concludes that she needs purpose in her life, and begins by volunteering at the town's Catholic missionary, with the permission of the Mother Superior (Diana Rigg). Kitty discovers depth of feeling by helping the orphaned children whose parents died due to the plague. Her heart softens toward Walter, turning her hatred into regret, because it took this dramatic and dangerous journey for them to become the people they truly wanted each other to be.
Recommended for: Fans of a wistful period piece about the dangers of seeking marriage only to satisfy one's own ego, and the wisdom that follows from acknowledging the error. Most of The Painted Veil is about the acrimony between Kitty and Walter, yet the film transforms into a romance as they come to accept their responsibility for the one another's pain, building a stronger bridge between them from the wreckage.