The Painted Veil

1920s Britain. Upper-class Kitty marries Walter, whose position as doctor sends the couple to Shanghai. Kitty has an affair with a charming man, and when Walter discovers the infidelity, he takes his wife, as a sort of punishment, and moves to the country, in order to fight the cholera epidemic. On the backdrop of the disconnection from the western world, something changes and matures in their relationship. John Curran’s remains faithful to the novel by Somerset Maugham, though he strays from the exoticism of the original, and focuses on the emotional drama that unfolds between the two characters. The precise performances of Edward Norton and Naomi Watts give the film great human depth.