Not my usual cup of tea this week, but it was this or Mamma Mia, and somehow I can't bring myself to watch Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan singing.

Glad I chose this film, though. It was excellent and I may even add it to the DVD collection...

The Painted Veil opens in 1925 in a remote region of China, where the stoic and noble Walter Fane (Edward Norton) has brought his errant wife, Kitty (Naomi Watts), after discovering her affair with a Shanghai consular official. A government bacteriologist, Walter has come to fight a cholera plague, apparently unconcerned about the danger to his wife, whose very existence seems to mock him.

Based on a 1925 novel by W. Somerset Maugham, and filmed on location in China against some spectacular scenery, the story unfolds in flashback, as we learn how the flighty Kitty agrees to marry Walter after a brief acquaintance, mostly to appease her mother, who is convinced she will never find a husband. With little in common, the Fanes settle into Shanghai, where Kitty falls madly in love with married British Vice Consul, Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber). Convinced Charlie is the love of her life, Kitty’s dreams are shattered when Walter discovers the affair and offers Kitty a choice – a scandalous divorce or she accompanies him to central China and a cholera outbreak. Walter offers a third alternative — a quiet way divorce, but only if Charlie will also agree to divorce his wife and marry Kitty, which of course — as Kitty soon painfully discovers — he is not prepared to do.

Left with no socially acceptable alternative but to accompany her husband, Kitty finds herself stuck in the middle on nowhere during a cholera epidemic, not sure what will kill her first, her unhappiness, the cholera or the boredom. Add to this Walter’s burning resentment, not to mention his workaholic dedication to locating the source of the outbreak, and the rising nationalism in China, which makes being a foreigner a very dangerous prospect, Kitty is forced to confront her own values, and find something within herself to survive. Eventually, she volunteers to help at the orphanage run by some French nuns, where the Mother Superior (Diana Rigg looking very unglamorous) helps Kitty find some purpose in life, and a reconciliation of sorts with her husband.

This film unfolds at a slow pace, but it suits the characters and the mood of the film. It has a rewarding, if not happy ending, that shuns the easy happy-ever-after solution for one much more satisfying. Watts is excellent as the flighty Kitty, injecting her with just enough humanity to make her sympathetic. Norton is also outstanding as Walter, in a brilliantly understated performance where less is so much more. The cast is rounded out by Toby Jones, as Waddington, the Fanes’ only English neighbour, and excellent performances from the Chinese cast, notably Anthony Wong (soon to be seen in the new Mummy movie) as the local army commander, Colonel Yu.

Directed by relative newcomer, John Curran, and filmed in glorious locations that become a character in their own right, The Painted Veil is a subtle, but moving study of real people in extraordinary circumstances dealing with very human issues. With both the main stars listed as producers in the credits, you can tell this is a labour of love, which makes the 1934 version (starring Garbo and Herbert Marshall), pale by comparison. For once, a remake worth the effort.