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HOM - Jeffrey Lyons on NewsChannel 4
The House of Mirth

Gillian Anderson branches out of televison in the latest adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel, The House of Mirth Read Jeffrey Lyons’ review.

New York, Jan. 4 -- The House of Mirth is taken from the Edit Wharton’s novel and adapted by its director Terence Davies. The result is a long, nice-looking, often tedious, but in its own way rewarding, look at a long ago time of innocence and the idle rich.

Listening to the dialogue and looking at the costumes, viewers will immediately know that this is the sort of movie with a very slow, intense pace. However, it is the sort of movie we don't get to see enough of any more, save for Miramax films, mostly. It’s set in New York between 1905 and 1907, and we're immersed in the upper class, the idle rich in the years before income taxes and before a middle class.

I'd always dismissed Gillian Anderson of TV’s X Files as a rather bland actress but give her credit in this film where she plays a single woman trolling the countryside for a husband, and attracted to a flashy lawyer Erik Stoltz. Stoltz has some money, but not enough to want to marry her and maintain his rich lifestyle.

Dan Ackroyd, of all people, plays a stock broker who has dishonorable intentions towards her. It turns out that he’s strolling for a mistress and Elanor Bron is her stern aunt, in control of Anderson' money. Ms. Bron was in Help with the Beatles, and Two for the Road two of the '60s most important films and has the sort of role Edna Mae Oliver used to play back in the 30s.

The film drones on, but it has some rich characters, including Anthony Lapaglia, her landlord who may be in love with her, and Laura Linney. Although she a a possible Oscar contender for You Can Count on Me, Linney is the sort of rising star who doesn't care about billing and is wiling to take a small but pivotal role in an ensemble cast like this.

Now the movie spans several years, and chronicles her being shunned from society and forced to heaven forbid actually take a job, working for a woman and drawing a salary -- unheard of for her class.

Just as with The Age of Innocence, another Edith Wharton novel directed on screen by Martin Scorcese, this is for an acquired taste. The House of Mirth is intense, the drama increases ever so slowly, and in the end, it is a film which conveys much of turn-of-the-century life among New York’s upper crust social position, flirtations, and little else.

THE END

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