The meticulous sincerity of a movie like “The White Countess” is why many film fans mourned the death last year of producer Ismail Merchant.
Together with director and career collaborator James Ivory, Merchant set a standard for literate, moving dramas researched so meticulously for costume and period details that they transported us for two hours. Not every one of their movies explored emotional peaks to equal the rich settings, but the team created masterworks such as “Howards End,” “The Remains of the Day” and “A Room With a View.”
“The White Countess” is their last film together, and though not a four-star wonder, it certainly sends Merchant off with honor and style. Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson explore a delicate chemistry amid the political turmoil of 1930s Shanghai, and as with all Merchant-Ivory films, personality comes before geography.
Full understanding of plot often takes its good, sweet time in the Merchant-Ivory films, so a brief explanation of “The White Countess” may help induce patience. Richardson is a former Russian countess living with her exiled family in the limbo of Shanghai. Kicked out of the mother country by revolution, they await enough cash to leave for Hong Kong or another friendlier city where they can return to the high society they knew.
Richardson has a daughter to support, so she’s an elegant dance-hall girl who sometimes does more than waltz with clients in order to buy food for the family. Her mother-in-law (Lynn Redgrave, Richardson’s real-life aunt) takes the cash but scorns her as tainted goods. (Vanessa Redgrave, Richardson’s real-life mother, plays her kindhearted aunt, to make “The White Countess” a remarkable family affair.)
The countess, a melancholy, fading beauty, is destined to meet American Tom Jackson (Fiennes). Jackson is a former diplomat blinded in an incident we learn about much later; meanwhile he’s drinking away his sorrows at various bars and dance halls, finally meeting the countess.
Jackson wants to launch a nightclub, an exciting and sad spot straight out of “Casablanca” that would capture the turmoil of Shanghai. He’s encouraged by a mysterious and ill-intentioned Japanese friend, Mr. Matsuda (Hiroyuki Sanada).
Fiennes is his usual accomplished self, bringing a near-hysterical bumbling quality to the man who styles himself as a polished nightclub owner. Richardson is refined and alluring as a tragic heroine disguising all feeling with a thin smile; partly because of the costuming, she looks older and more matronly than previous roles.
Merchant and Ivory worked with author Kazuo Ishiguro to shape the story, based in part on their admiration for Ishi-
guro’s “When We Were Orphans,” set in the same period. Ishiguro also wrote “The Remains of the Day,” and both movies display his talents and flaws.
The details are thick and the period credibility impeccable, yet Ishiguro is drawn to a British form of emotional repression that doesn’t always translate to the big screen. It may be an American desire to have characters try some busting out, but the feeling lingers nevertheless.
May Merchant rest in peace – he died of a ruptured ulcer at age 68, while working on this movie. And may Ivory find other partners equally adept at compelling filmmaking. “The White Countess” is a laudable final entry for anyone’s résumé.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
*** | “The White Countess”
R for violence and mature subject matter|2 hours, 5 minutes|PERIOD DRAMA|Directed by James Ivory; written by Kazuo Ishiguro; starring Natasha Richardson, Ralph Fiennes, Hiroyuki Sanada, Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave|Opens today at Landmark’s Esquire Theatre.
