Click to play videoLike most people I know, I too am a sucker for romantic films that are intelligent and original, or just plain passionate. But I think that's a genre that's over-exhausted and over-exploited because it's become so increasingly difficult to find a really good love story these days.
The last one I saw is a beautiful and sweeping romance called Painted Veil, it's a film based on Somerset Maugham's novel and it's already been filmed twice before. But the version I'm talking about is the one that was made last year with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts in central roles.
Set in the 1920s, the story is basically about the moral awakening of this restless, vain, young woman who moves to Shanghai with her bacteriologist husband and starts an affair with a married man.
When her husband finds out, he takes her along to a far-flung village that's been plagued by a cholera epidemic. There he pretty much leaves her alone, ignoring her completely while he tends to the ill and the dying.
She is of course, bored and angry, and eventually she helps out at the local convent, where children need to be cared for. Now you also need to understand this is China in the mid-20s and this story takes place right in the centre of the uprisings against the British colonial rule.
In fact, that tense political climate serves as the backdrop for this romance. It's here and now that these two people really get to know each other, under these extreme circumstances. It's here that they gain a newfound respect for each other and eventually they fall in love.
This film is one of those sweeping romances, a really passionate story and I think it's interesting because how often do you see a love story between a married couple who're rekindling a romance that they never had?
Another reason why this story is so spectacular is because it's set against this beautiful yet troubled backdrop of a small Chinese village in the middle of this deadly epidemic. The film is shot beautifully and that's another factor that adds so much character to the story.
I've always been a very big fan of Edward Norton, and he's excellent in this film, but The Painted Veil is really a Naomi Watts film.
Not only does she have this luminous beauty, she's also such a fine actress – just see how she goes from this despicable girl to a tragic wife in two hours.
If you're really in the mood for a moving, touching, epic romance, then go rent The Painted Veil on DVD, it's one of the most poignant films I've seen in a long, long time.
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