Final Merchant-Ivory film will satisfy the romantics

BY JAN STUART | STAFF WRITER

December 21, 2005

Ismael Merchant, a standard- bearer for cinematic civility and discerning taste, died in May. With his director-partner James Ivory, he produced more than 30 movies - many of them literary adaptations set in a bygone England, India or America - whose fastidious attention to the minutiae of costumes and decor occasionally upstaged the conflicts at the film's core.

In contrast with iconic Merchant-Ivory films such as "Howard's End," "A Room with a View" and "Maurice," the screenplay Kazuo Ishiguro fashioned from the bones of a Junichiro Tanizaki novel for the filmmaking duo's final collaboration has very little to do with the source material. Ishiguro (who adapted his own novel "Remains of the Day" for Merchant and Ivory) was much more interested in the stories he heard from his Japanese businessman grandfather about living in Shanghai's International Settlement during the politically roiling mid-30s.

The result is "The White Countess," a vaguely corny but sumptuously satisfying romantic drama that offers up heaps of everything we have come to depend on Merchant and Ivory for: hyper-articulate dialogue, authentic period detail, impassioned performances from the creme de la creme of English-speaking actors, and lots of mooning over how much nicer things were before the aristocracy fell from grace.

Ralph Fiennes surpasses himself as Jackson, a respected American businessman and diplomat who, blinded by terrorist violence and dissolute from a run of family tragedy, has thrown over his political ideals to invest in a Shanghai nightclub. Jackson tailors his upscale club to evoke the tragic allure of its hostess Sofia (a touchingly vaporous Natasha Richardson), an expat Russian countess who has been reduced to nightclub dancing and the occasional trick to support a young daughter and extended family living in cramped impoverishment.

Ishiguro's leisurely explication of Sofia's wildly unsympathetic matriarchal household (Richardson's real-life mother, Vanessa Redgrave, as an aging aunt, Lynn Redgrave as a crusty mother-in-law and Madeleine Potter as a backbiting sister-in-law) employs melodramatic tropes that could have been culled from the theatrical literature of the day: "Anna Christie" by way of "The Three Sisters," with a bit of Grimms' Brothers cruelty thrown in for good measure.

While Sofia sacrifices her decency to support an ungrateful family, Jackson abandons any remaining sense of civic duty. Abetted by a cryptic Japanese gentleman named Mr. Matsuda (a superb Hiroyuki Sanada) who shares the fallen diplomat's taste for nightlife, Jackson naively allows his club to be used as a Petri dish for fomenting political insurrection.

The contrivances of Ishiguro's peripatetic scenario are superseded by the slow-burning romance at the film's core, as Jackson begins to dismantle the emotional wall he has erected between himself and Sofia. Fiennes has never been finer. He seems to be channeling James Stewart during his Frank Capra days: Watching his boyish, haunted Jackson is like seeing the dark sequel to "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," after the idealism has faded and the bitter realities of politics have sunk in.