A Good Woman

A new review from The Movie Snob

A Good Woman (B+). This movie is based on an Oscar Wilde play (Mrs. Windermere's Fan), so you know you can count on sparkling dialogue if nothing else. In this case, there is more besides, namely a thoroughly enjoyable plot. The acting, by contrast, is shaky. Helen Hunt, not my favorite actress even under the best conditions, seems completely out of her element, and my cousin Diane thought much the same about Scarlett Johansson. The movie is set in 1930, and Hunt plays Mrs. Stella Erlynne, an American who is apparently a professional mistress. As the movie opens, she is in America, finding herself unfortunately short both of funds and of lovers to foot her bills. She sees a newspaper article about Meg and Robert Windermere (Johansson, Mark Umbers), who are fabulously wealthy newlyweds from Rhode Island, and next thing you know she has tracked them down to the Amalfi coast in Italy. Mrs. Erlynne quickly scandalizes the idle rich who have congregated in Amalfi, and Meg finds herself doubting Robert's fidelity even while she herself is pursued by the caddish Lord Darlington. I thought the movie got off to a slow start, and that Hunt's performance was strange and offputting. (She seemed to deliver every single line in exactly the same flat, inflectionless manner.) But the plot and the dialogue ultimately won me over. Worth seeing.