The Divorce of Lady X

Tim Whelan's 1938 British film begins with people stranded in a hotel by fog. A woman enters the barrister Everard's suite and spends the night there. The next day a new client comes to him: a lord whose wife spent a night at a hotel with someone else. The film uses the familiar template of mistaken identity comedy. Everard believes the woman is his client's wife, and the whole narrative is built on what follows from that error. Merle Oberon sustains the ambiguity enjoyably. It was shot in Technicolor, uncommon in British cinema at the time. The costume and interior design supply its visual ambition. This is one of Laurence Olivier's comic roles, and seeing him in this register is unusual. Who it's for: those who like thirties drawing-room comedy and classic British cinema. Who it's not for: viewers looking for a complex story; the film rests on one misunderstanding and its ending is obvious from the start.