A well done adaptation of a Noel Coward play – fun, light, and goes exactly where you think it will go. Jessica Biel works surprisingly well as a fast living 1920s American invading a conservative British family. The costumes are pretty Deco wear, with Biel having some very glamorous outfits.
2 thoughts on “Easy Virtue (2008) short review”
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I’m watching this now — so far it’s adorable. 💖
I saw this recently and I loved it loved it loved it.
I had two real quibbles: Who goes off with the protagonist at the ending.
And the one that made me check here: They had an innocent and naive young girl of the landed gentry do the cancan in a charity show with the bold, modern, and sophisticated protagonist. So far, so good — room for some contrast and humor in that the protagonist would simply focus on dancing well and encouraging the naive miss, while the naive miss would take some encouraging to do all that skirt flipping and high kicking, but get into the fun of it.
I just couldn’t buy it when they decide the naive miss would do this with no knickers or underpants. Full bare bottom. With all the skirt lifting. In front of her family, her lifelong neighbors, and the man she wants to marry.
They showed it as the result of her misunderstanding a joke. But no matter how she misunderstood the joke, a girl of that background would not have done that. She’d be too busy struggling with the skirt flips even with large opaque knickers on.
That’s possible the most egregious of a whole lot of things like that I’ve seen in recent years, where a determinedly moral and modest period woman suddenly goes instantly from no contact to having 90-second consensual sex on a table, for example. By the front door. Where anyone can walk in. Including her mother-in-law.
All things of that sort are lazy writing and lazy filmmaking, with a giant helping of cheap and tawdry on top of it. WTF, filmmakers?