Easy Virtue - An immoral wife
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Easy Virtue - An immoral wife |
| Original title | Easy Virtue |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2008 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 6 JMK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Stephan Elliott |
| script | Stephan Elliott, Sheridan Jobbins |
| production |
Joseph Abrams , James D. Stern , Barnaby Thompson |
| music | Marius De Vries |
| camera | Martin Kenzie |
| cut | Sue Blainey |
| occupation | |
| |
Easy Virtue is a British gesellschaftssatirische comedy film from the year 2008 . Directed by Stephan Elliott , who wrote the script together with Sheridan Jobbins based on a play by Noël Coward . The script differs greatly from the literary original and also from the first film adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock . Unlike the theater play and silent film , this film version has a happy ending , albeit an open one .
action
The American Larita Huntington met the young Englishman John Whittaker at the Monaco Grand Prix in Monte Carlo in 1930 and married him. Larita is capricious, chic and dressed in the latest fashion; she drinks alcohol, smokes and does not mince words, while John is shy and inexperienced. The couple travels to England together, where Larita is to be introduced to the family.
The Whittakers are gentry and lead the life of the English landed gentry with fox hunts, charity events and mutual invitations. John's mother Veronica Whittaker is hostile to the self-confident daughter-in-law from the start, especially since her financial resources are insufficient to save the Whittakers' over-indebted property. She had intended the daughter of the rich Lord Hurst to be the wife of John. The two sisters Hilda and Marion fluctuate between admiration and envy. Marion is mired in illusions of the return of a lover who left without further comment, while Hilda is hopelessly in love with the son of the wealthy neighbor of the Whittakers, Lord Hurst. Support and understanding gets Larita of her father- Colonel Jim Whittaker, a cynical and embittered veterans of the First World War , and the sympathies of the can Butlers Furber and service staff to be sure.
.jpg)
The longer John lives on his home country estate, the harder it is for him to inform the family that he will live with Larita in London in the future, which he had promised his wife. In long conversations in which Mrs. Whittaker appeals to his responsibility to the family, mother and son come closer again.
Larita spends more time with her father-in-law in his workshop, where he tinkers with motorcycles. The major, who was in France during World War I, likes to talk to his daughter-in-law, in whom he finds an equal interlocutor. Larita tells him about her childhood in Detroit , where her father worked as a mechanic at the Ford factory and where her passion for cars began. She tells Colonel Whittaker that she is penniless. Her capital is the racing car, with which she earns money, and an oil painting that a certain Spaniard, Picasso, although the name does not mention, painted of her. This image becomes a symbol in the fight between the two women for John. Larita asserts that the offensive picture is hung in the house, but has to take part in the fox hunt as a rider to compensate, which she vehemently rejects. Larita then gets into the saddle, albeit on the motorcycle that she and Mr. Whittaker have since repaired.
The guerrilla war between the two women continues. Mrs. Whittaker is distributing bouquets of flowers all over the house because she knows that Larita reacts to flowers with allergic sneezes. Larita and sister-in-law Hilda are supposed to perform a cancan during a charity show for the benefit of war veterans . Philip Hurst, whom Hilda adores hopelessly, makes her believe that a real cancan has to be danced without underpants, which the naive Hilda does. Larita is made responsible for Hilda's embarrassment.
Larita and John, who no longer have any privacy, but always live under the watchful eyes of the whole family, retreat to a remote hunting lodge for a lunchtime . In the middle of the act of love, they are caught red-handed by the pack of dogs of a hunting party, which also includes Lord Hurst and Mrs. Whittaker . The situation comes to a head, Larita is cut like an outsider and receives little support from her husband.
Meanwhile, Larita learns of a family scandal at the Whittakers: The Colonel had not come home for over a year after the end of the war and had lived as an alcoholic in a French brothel for a while. Mrs. Whittaker embarrassingly got him out of there herself, but the neighborhood is told he came back to his wife of his own accord. Since then, marriage has been just a farce.
At a reception in her honor, Larita meets the Hursts and their daughter Sarah. Sarah was John's childhood friend, and Mrs. Whittaker had hoped that a marriage would save the financially troubled family estate from ruin. Sarah shows no dislike for Larita and vice versa, the two women become friends. Mrs. Whittaker tells John about her original wedding plans for him and the economic problems in a private conversation; she appeals to her son's sense of responsibility and advises him through the flower to get a divorce again. John becomes thoughtful and seeks closeness and conversation with Sarah.
In the meantime, the sisters-in-law have rummaged through Larita's past and found out that she had already been married: Her husband was considerably older and died under mysterious circumstances after a serious illness. Larita was on trial for the murder of her husband, but was acquitted. Later she admits that at his request, her husband, whom she loved very much, had euthanized with an injection . John, who knew nothing of his wife's past life, is horrified and turns away from Larita, disappointed. When Larita asks him to dance at a house ball on the country estate, he refuses and leaves. Instead, the father-in-law steps in and puts Larita on a provocatively long and erotically charged tango on the floor. The ball company reacts with icy rejection.
Mrs. Whittaker threatens Larita to throw her out of the house, but she has enough of her own and packs her bags to leave for London without John. Before that, she tells Sarah to marry John. In a final address, she settles accounts with the mother-in-law and the sisters-in-law and their double standards, which they believe are false . Before she gets into her racing car, she hands the butler Furber (with the remark “There's something in it for Jackson too”) an envelope with money. Suddenly the Colonel storms out of the house, jumps into the open car and falls onto the seat next to her; Larita shows no emotion. The Colonel asks them to drive off and gives Furber quick instructions to send the painting to London as soon as the address is known. Larita starts the car and drives off with her father-in-law.
Reviews
The Wiesbadener Tagblatt calls the film "ironic and sharp-tongued". Further: "The upbeat dialogues are funny, witty and outrageous, the ideas are often weird and bizarre, but they are an excellent match for Larita."
The film was received differently by the German specialist critics. The critic of the world mourns the silent film Easy Virtue by Alfred Hitchcock from 1928, while Till Kadritzke of critic.de says that "the emphasis on cinematic implementation ultimately undermines the ensemble character of the play".
backgrounds
The film was shot from January to March 2008 at Ealing Studios in London, as well as at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire , Englefield House in Berkshire and Flintham Hall in Nottinghamshire .
The world premiere took place on September 8, 2008 at the Toronto International Film Festival . The film was released in German cinemas on June 24, 2010. The soundtrack includes a lot of original music from the 1920s / 1930s, including a. by Cole Porter (You do something to me; Let's Misbehave!) and Charleston melodies. But popular songs of the modern times like the sex bomb known from Tom Jones are rearranged in the style of the time. Ben Barnes and Jessica Biel sing some of the film songs off- screen, such as the piece Mad About the Boy , written by author Noel Coward, at the beginning of the film .
Web links
- Easy Virtue - An immoral wife in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Approval for Easy Virtue - An Immoral Wife . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2010 (PDF; test number: 122 090 K).
- ↑ Age rating for Easy Virtue - An Immoral Wife . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Film review in the Wiesbadener Tagblatt ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , published on June 8, 2010, accessed June 8, 2010
- ↑ Reviews of Easy Virtue film-zeit.de, accessed on August 26, 2020
- ↑ Cosima Lutz: Jessica Biel tries to be an immoral wife. In: Welt.de , accessed on October 23, 2016
- ↑ Easy Virtue, film criticism ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on October 23, 2016
- ↑ Jessica Biel sings in the studio Mad About the Boy for Easy Virtue one , Youtube , uploaded October 31, 2008, accessed on July 8, 201
- ^ The star about music in Easy Virtue , published on June 26, 2010, accessed on July 8, 2010
