The White Countess dvd movie.|
The White Countess buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
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List Price: $14.94 Our Price: $13.49 You Save: $1.45 Features • AC-3 • Closed-captioned • Color • Dolby • Dubbed • DVD-Video • Subtitled • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 2005 DVD Release : 16 May, 2006 |
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The White Countess description A stellar cast and an intricate script enhance this last film from the elegant producing/directing team of Merchant/Ivory (creators of A Room with a View, Howards End, and more). Set in 1930s Shanghai, "The White Countess" is both Sofia (Natasha Richardson, Patty Hearst), a fallen member of the Russian aristocracy, and a nightclub created by a blind American diplomat named Jackson (Ralph Fiennes, The English Patient), who asks Sofia to be the centerpiece of the world he wants to create. Sofia accepts to escape a life of prostitution, but Jackson's world proves both fragile and volatile--as does Shanghai itself, on the verge of an invasion from Japan. The script, by novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day), is fundamentally about culture--what it is, how it's formed, how it shapes and is shaped by human desires--but to describe it thus makes the movie sound academic. Instead, it's lush and subtle, fluid in how it weaves together two people deeply wounded by past losses, who gradually come to embrace what the immediate moment has to offer. Fiennes and Richardson are the movie's core, but surrounding them is a stunning supporting cast that includes Vanessa Redgrave (Mrs. Dalloway, Julia), Lynn Redgrave (Shine), Allan Corduner (Topsy-Turvy), and Hiroyuki Sanada (Ringu). --Bret Fetzer |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Serious film |
| The White Countess is, to me, a film along the lines of European dramas and probably isn't quite to most Americans taste. To follow the film, you have to concentrate. Its not a romance (although one develops), not quite drama, and of course not an action flick. More of a film to watch alone when the rest of the family is gone for the weekend. The setting is old Shanghai of the 1930s, where a lot of Russian bluebloods fled following the 1917 to 1926(?) civil war. Pre-WW2 Shanghai is not well remembered or understood by Americans today.
The acting is TERRIFIC; Ralph Fiennes does a great job of keeping a neutral accent for his American character, although his British inflection bleeds in a bit sometimes. All the cast were very professional in their acting. Good flick, along the lines of a classic serious novel. But not for everyone. |
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