A GOOD WOMAN
** (two stars)
The cure for Scarlett fever.
Running time: 93 minutes. Rated PG (sensuality, mild swearing). At the Empire, the Union Square, the First and 62nd.
SCARLETT Johansson never looked more beautiful, nor gave a lamer performance, than in “A Good Woman.”
John Bloomfield’s stunning period costumes are the only memorable thing about this loose and rather limp adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s much-filmed 1892 comedy of manners “Lady Windermere’s Fan” – which, for no particularly good reason, moves the story to a postcard-pretty resort in 1930 Italy.
For this version, Johansson has been demoted to Mrs. Windermere. She’s a naive Rhode Islander (she sounds more like California to me) married to a wealthy American businessman (Mark Umbers, who sounds like the Brit he is).
Into their happy marriage comes Mrs. Erlynne (Helen Hunt), an impecunious widow from New York (her accent is pure California) who has long supported herself through the kindness of married men.
When Mrs. W. discovers that Mr. W. – Mrs. E.’s supposed “investment adviser” – has been writing checks to the older woman, Mrs. W. starts believing the local gossips, who seem to have been recruited from the ranks of casting rejects from Merchant-Ivory films.
Mrs. W. pitches a hissy fit – think Prince in “Purple Rain” – and falls briefly into the arms of the playboy Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell-Scott, who is an even duller and less appealing actor than Umbers).
It turns out that Mrs. E. is actually blackmailing Mr. W. over a secret involving his wife – though one needn’t have studied “Lady Windermere” in high school to figure it out, even before Mrs. E. and Mrs. W turn up at a party in identical bosom-baring dresses.
Though they have interpolated epigrams from other Wilde writings, director Mark Barker and credited writer Howard Himelstein have managed to turn one of the great English-language comedies into a leaden soap opera.
They have been assisted in this by an utterly miscast Hunt, who was once a gifted comedienne but has relentlessly gone for pathos in stinkers like “Pay It Forward” ever since winning her Oscar for “As Good As It Gets.”
Still, she’s better than Johansson’s deer-caught-in-the-headlights Mrs. Windermere.
Johansson has simply not grown as a performer as she’s shuttled from film to photo shoot in the last few years – her poorly conceived neurotic actress was the weakest link in “Match Point,” which she shot well after “A Good Woman,” filmed back in the summer of 2003.
Tom Wilkinson brings his usual professionalism to Tuppy, a British millionaire who falls hard for Mrs. E., adding a much needed touch of class.
But overall “A Good Woman” is such a dreary affair that it makes you wonder whether the last Wilde adaptation – the critically lambasted “The Importance of Being Earnest” with Reese Witherspoon – was really that bad after all.