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The Denver Post
'House of Mirth' details woman's fall from grace
3.5 (out of 4) stars
By Steven Rosen
Denver Post Movie Critic



Jan. 26, 2001 - The House of Mirth" is a beautiful, elegantly tasteful film about the utter and complete devastation of a human being. Consider it a war film - class war waged inside the country estates, city mansions, gardens, carriages and symphony halls of New York's wealthiest, circa early 1900s. It's an adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1905 novel.

It's beautiful because British director Terence Davies is a compositional perfectionist. He makes movies you want to stare at, admire, contemplate, even touch - like a painting. They have a strong tactility. Rare among contemporary filmmakers, he strives to evoke a sense of stillness in his films - encouraging us to stop and consider what we're watching.

It's a good kind of slowness. He particularly uses light well, and also favors slow "dissolves" as between-scene transitions. One of his films was eve n called "Distant Lives, Still Voices."

Yet "Mirth" also is beautiful because of Davies' choice of the actress who plays central character Lily Bart - "The XFiles'" Gillian Anderson. He has said her alert, attentive face and rich red hair remind him of a John Singer Sargent portrait. And Anderson gives an alluringly determined, carefully studied performance. Wearing costume designer Monica Howe's gorgeously outsized hats (you could sit in one!) and tapered outfits, Anderson looks as if she's an elegant artwork.

"Mirth" is devastating because of what happens to Lily - and the quiet yet unrelenting way that it happens. Anderson slowly reveals her character's desperation and sense of defeat as the story, and her life, turns against her. As this happens, so unfairly and yet without mercy, you'll realize "Mirth" is not a variation of a Merchant Ivory costume drama or PBS period piece. This is an American tragedy as much as anything in "Traffic" is. Only the drug of choice is money.

In the film, like Wharton's novel, 29-year-old Lily attempts to use her beauty to search for a wealthy husband in New York. Not exactly poor, but not independent, she lives on her aunt's money. She has no skill or trade - her attempt at millinery is pathetic - other than her marriageability. Because of that, in a way not that different from "A Streetcar Named Desire's" Blanche DuBois, she depends on the kindness of strangers - or, rather, of superficially friendly acquaintances.

She is prone to their gossip, rumors, deceits, and favors owed. If she were devious herself, she would perhaps thrive in this environment. But as Lily's friend Carry (Elizabeth McGovern) observes, "Lily's never been very clever that way."

She is honest and faithful, serious about her word and her honor. Is that a match against wealth? In this film, that's a rhetorical question.

Lily also is repressing something - she does believe in love. There is a young lawyer named Lawrence Seldon (Eric Stoltz, with a youthfully agreeable, David Bowie-ish feminine quality) with whom she has an easy, comfortable way, and who seems to love her. But he isn't wealthy. The film begins with Lily, innocently but daringly going to his apartment to share tea and conversation. On her way out from the building, she is seen by one Sim Rosedale (Anthony LaPaglia), a wealthy Johnny-come-lately who would use her for his own rise. (In the novel, he is Jewish; the film doesn't mention it.)

Trying to avoid even the appearance of anything untoward, she tells him she was visiting her dressmaker. Rosedale replies he didn't think there was one inside the building - and he should know because he owns it. This is how Lily's luck goes throughout "Mirth."

Everyone in her world always is one step ahead of her.

Wharton's novel has been called bitterly satiric. Davies has no interest in that, however. Perhaps because he is of British working-class origins, and thus keenly aware of class distinctions, he hones in on the cruelty inherent in Lily's plight. There certainly is a feminist dimension to the story, but there are other themes, too.

Since Davies is an unsentimental director, it at times it feels like he's piling a load of woes atop Lily's lovely hat. He also leaves plot points hanging during scene transitions, forcing you to stay alert to keep atop the action. (It's not hard.) But ultimately he makes you share in her sorrow in a way that never feels manipulative.

And in using Glasgow and other parts of Scotland for New York and its luxurious environs, he and cinematographer Remi Adefarasin have created a lost world of deceptively luxuriant gentility.

"Mirth" provides Lily with several strong adversaries. Dan Aykroyd is the fatuous Gus Trenor, who seeks to seduce Lily by making money for her and then demanding sexual favors in return. And as her black-clad wicked witch of an aunt, Eleanor Bron is frighteningly stern and cold-hearted.

But neither compares to Laura Linney's outwardly cheerful Bertha Dorset, who does the most to destroy Lily - and to whom Lily could do the same, if only she could will herself to be as mean. In a scene done to hauntingly sad perfection, Bertha publicly degrades and scandalizes Lily by implying Lily has dallied with her husband. The battleground she picks - a dinner during a Mediterranean cruise - leaves Lily completely helpless, for she is Bertha's guest on the cruise. Anderson is especially superb here, as the shaken and shocked Lily tries to maintain her tarnished honor by offering a lame, pathetic rational explanation for what has occurred. What is her choice?

"My dear, the world is vile," Carry says afterward. "Mirth" makes you want to do something, anything, to console Lily as she discovers the truth of the statement again and again.

THE END

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