The Painted Veil

I don't know if it's just my personal taste - period melodramas are not among my favorite genres - but I found the movie to be quite boring. The only reason I went to see it is because I am a die-hard Edward Norton fan, and I watch all of his movies. The first half hour or so I thought was laughable. The acting and the dialogue were so melodramatic that at points it felt like a soap opera. The scenes were well structured - they contained real drama and not just small talk, like in a lot of movies nowadays ("Little Children" for example). Each character had an objective, and a set of actions to match. But the dialogue itself was horrible - a lot of the time they were saying out loud what should have been their subtext. That's the first half an hour. After that, it gets significantly better, and I do believe that if you're the type of person who enjoys such movies (like "The English Patient" or "Memoirs of a Geisha" for example) you will be entertained and maybe moved. I wasn't. The ingredients are all there: stunning cinematography, a beautiful soundtrack, three-dimensional characters, and very strong performances by both Norton and Watts. I did get a kick out of Norton's coldness and apathy towards Watts, and it even got a few laughs out of me. They were both a pleasure to watch, especially during scenes where not everything was said out-loud, and you could feel the tension under the surface. It's the story that was the problem - I just wasn't engaged by it, and the whole thing seemed to move too slowly. All in all a decent effort, but not an entirely successful one. 6 out of 10.