Larita is an auto racer, the recent winner of the Monaco Grand Prix. It's worth remembering that in the 1920s, racing drivers and pilots were admired almost like astronauts (see Shaw's "Man and Superman") are today, and females were goddesses.
Yet Larita, an American unschooled in the labyrinth of the British upper crust, earnestly hopes to make her alliance with John a success. She does everything that an American girl is taught to do, even supervising the preparation of what may be the first edible meal ever served in the stately home (recall that all-purpose 1920s Brit recipe: "Cook until dead").
Scott Thomas and Colin Firth are old hands at their characters, the one brittle and unpleasant, the other depressed, disillusioned and unhappily wed. Ben Barnes is your prototypical fresh young man. Jessica Biel will surprise some with her skill; she takes to Coward as if to the manner (if not manor) born.
She has certainly left her work in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2003) far behind. She makes Larita independent and able, yet capable of a love more sincere than the feckless John can comprehend. She would be the best thing that ever happened to him, and the story is essentially about whether he can get that through his head.
Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker are both more nuanced than the cliches that they first seem. She has her urgent reasons for wishing her son to marry elsewhere. He is a member of that generation where most of the best and brightest died in the trenches of France -- including, we learn, all of the men under his command. The matriarch clings desperately to the shreds of her fading family. Her husband retreats into dotty distraction and a studied casual evasiveness that masks despair.
"Easy Virtue" is being presented, and was no doubt intended by Coward, as a comedy. As we'd expect, the dialogue has an edgy wit, although it has no ambitions to be falling-down funny. Here is the Odd Couple formula applied in a specific time and place that make them feel very odd indeed.
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