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Girls On Film
HOM review by Jana S.

In THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, Lily Bart, as played by the cinematically-untried Gillian Anderson, is an early 20th century CLUELESS character: she cares about clothes, being an independent girl, and having a good time. Guys are a source of annoyance and things with which to play, like a cat with a ball of string. She bats her eyes at them and keeps them slinking along behind her like so many little lapdogs. Unfortunately, the one guy she actually digs is too poor to be a serious contender for her hand, and so she tends to her marriage prospects like she's looking for a good job-which, in the reality of the day, she is.

It's pretty shocking to see the serious and upstanding Agent Scully dressed up in constricting, fancy turn-of-the-century bodices and bustles-and the story itself is something that the always-in-control Scully would detest. Lily's downfall comes from the fact that she attempts to hold her own amidst the gossip-intense world of inner society-the doyennes whose every movement is based on their place by upbringing and by marriage do not cotton to our little indie grrl. Instead, as Lily turns down offers of rich men's hands-in-marriage, her "friends" (definitely the only-fair-weather variety) turn against her little by little, until she has fallen as low as she can (she turns into both a drug addict and a working class girl, both despicably awful outcomes of a life that came from privilege and money and was destined to maintain both until death). Edith Wharton has written some pretty depressing stories (she was the Charles Dickens of her time and place in society) but this is the one that will most make you want to shoot yourself.

Terence Davies, a director best known for his work examining his painful British childhood in gentle, slow and sharp stories, takes Wharton's story very seriously-the film runs over two hours and each moment is so painstakingly created that you get the sense that he lost himself behind the camera and just let it keep running because those slow moments were like a kind of foreplay for him. The sexual tension between the brazen, then beaten-down, Lily and her various admirers (particularly Eric Stoltz, a reserved young man, the only one who really loves her) is very intense-there is little sex actually shown but plenty going on behind the scenes and discussed in those gentile words of that time. Ultimately, however, I think Davies draws out Lily's horrible life too slowly, and we end up knowing what's going to happen in the end because he dropped so many breadcrumbs along the long and winding road of THE HOUSE OF MIRTH. It ruins the horror and tension he had started building in the beginning of the film. Fortunately, the story packs such an emotional wallop that you won't mind.

If you love period pieces, you'll love the look and sounds of this one (a Mozart opera becomes as baked with lustful heat as anything you've ever seen in a Merchant & Ivory movie) -the production design, costumes and score are ridiculously luscious. The performances are what makes the film, though: Gillian Anderson brings a new and exciting vitality to her role as Lily, and her downfall will rip your heart out and stuff it back into your heaving chest at the end of the film.

Stoltz and the hangdog Terry Kinney ("Oz") give their plodding characters some real inner life through their expressive faces. Clearly, Davies is good with actors and has gotten them all (including the sickly-looking return of former Brat Pack honey Elizabeth McGovern in a small role) to be particularly revealing and open with their roles, none of which are all that pretty.

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH's story is a classic cautionary tale about what happens when a woman tries to live her own life her own way without society's favor -I think even the most contemporary grrls will dig the feminist lesson Wharton tells here. It is hard to put yourself in Lily's position because life has changed so drastically (thank GOODESS!) since then, but everyone can relate to the fact that there is always someone around who doesn't exactly celebrate strong women and their attempts to live by their own rules. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH may not house any mirth but it does house a small, precious cinematic treasure.

THE END

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