A Good Woman

Filmmakers should realize by now that Oscar Wilde works best on screen if played—pardon the expression—straight. Lady Windemere's Fan, Wilde's first stage effort, isn't his best to begin with, but Mike Barker's re-titled, updated version makes it worse. The original revolves around a young British aristocratic couple whose marital bliss is threatened by an older woman of ill repute that the husband appears to be intimate with (the big revelation is that the woman is actually the wife's long-absent mother, whose identity he's trying to keep secret in order to protect the reputation of the woman he loves). A mixture of social satire and sentiment more conventional than the aesthetically “pure” farce Wilde later favored, it's also far less funny. Barker tries to make the story visually more attractive by setting the action at the lovely Italian port of Amalfi, circa the 1930s, and he stuffs the script with bon mots looted from elsewhere in Wilde (this is as much a compendium of the writer's best lines as it is an adaptation of the original play), but the filmmaker cannot overcome major miscalculations in the casting, as the two female leads are woefully wrong for their parts: Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson's flat American deliveries just suck the life right out of their lines. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director Mike Barker and producer Alan Greenspan, and trailers. Bottom line: a small extras package for an unremarkable film.] (F. Swietek)