The Painted Veil

Kitty marries the bacteriologist Walter Fane to get away from her mother. In Shanghai the marriage collapses quickly and she begins an affair with a British vice consul. When Walter finds out, this is his revenge: he volunteers for a Chinese town in the middle of a cholera epidemic and makes her come with him. Bored at first, she starts working at an orphanage and sees her husband's courage for the first time. John Curran directed, from W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel. Naomi Watts plays Kitty and Edward Norton plays Walter. Norton's contribution went past acting; he suggested Watts for the lead and worked on the screenplay. The production moved some scenes from Hong Kong to Shanghai for historical accuracy. It was shot in Guangxi province, particularly in the old village of Huangyao. The Chinese partners required script approval; the negotiation ended with only 38 seconds cut. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 74 percent, with critics praising the leads' deft handling of imperfect, complicated characters while some found it handsome but emotionally distant. Alexandre Desplat won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score. The screenwriter Ron Nyswaner took the National Board of Review award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Who it is for: viewers who like period drama, slow marital stories and landscape on screen. Who it is not for: anyone uneasy that the Chinese characters stay in the background. The epidemic and the village serve as ground for a relationship between two English people.