Purists may not recognise many of The Master's words in this very 21st-century rendering of Noel Coward's 1924 play, but they certainly recognise his light touch, which has been lifted wholesale by writer/director Stephan Elliott.
Elliott was the man who gave us The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Much of that same outlandishness is here, courtesy of Jessica Biel as spunky heroine Larita.
An American, a racing car driver and a woman with something of a mysteri
ous past, Larita arrives at the crumbling stately home of her new husband (Ben Barnes) and immediately causes unrest.
She reads Lady Chatterley and Sodom and Gomorrah. She's a woman of the world and a gal who knows what she wants. Her loved-up new groom is not it. But his hen-pecked father (Colin Firth) is quite attractive…
Thrust into polite society of post-Great War England, Larita quickly finds she does not fit. Moreover, she rapidly tires of trying. The atmosphere between her and mother-in-law Mrs Whittaker (Kristen Scott Thomas) is positively glacial and is not helped when Larita joins the local hunt – on a motorbike.
Easy Virtue is a genuine three-act play – a film with real people, real situations, real words and real humour. Elliott has brought a modern edge to the proceedings without ever losing sight of Coward's original material. It is constantly funny, drily witty and frequently laugh-out-loud brilliant.
Kris Marshall gets all the best lines as an all-seeing butler who quietly witnesses the downfall of an ancient house and its motley denizens. He even manages to steal the scene when disposing of the family dog, which Larita has managed to kill by sitting on it.
This is a deliciously subversive comedy of manners brought to life by an energetic and disparate cast. Firth and Thomas, cast in overly familiar roles, nonetheless manage to inject real spirit into their work, helped in no small part by Elliott's script.
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