The producing/directing team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory has been mocked for being exponents of “the Laura Ashley school of film-making”, which is apt in some ways but also rather unfair. They have a meticulous eye for period detail and a beautifully understated way with a story, though there is the danger of blandless in that very reticence.
They are, at least, masters of the literary adaptation, along with their long-time scriptwriter, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Their new movie, The Golden Bowl, revisits Henry James, whose novels The Europeans and The Bostonians they adapted so successfully in 1979 and 1984 respectively. Having done much with EM Forster (if only they had taken on A Passage to India, instead of leaving it to David Lean’s inappropriately epic imagination), and appearing to have a knack for the late Victorian to Edwardian period, they have returned to James. Perhaps they were a little put out by Iain Softley’s sharp, edgy version of The Wings of the Dove and sought to reappropriate some of their natural territory.
Set a century ago, The Golden Bowl portrays the intertwining relationships of four people – American billionaire Adam Verver (Nick Nolte), his daughter Maggie (Kate Beckinsale), her friend Charlotte (Uma Thurman) and Maggie’s husband and Charlotte’s lover, the Italian prince Amerigo (Jeremy Northam). James’s characteristic themes of American versus European values, innocence versus intrigue, and the whole business of money and marriage are kept skilfully at a simmer.
The movie is stately, perhaps a little too stately. It may be counteracting a storyline that nowadays would fuel an episode or two of a TV soap opera. But it has none of a soap opera’s emotional excess or frantic plot-manipulation, and the performances of all the principals are excellent. Nolte has considerable gravitas, Beckinsale is touching, Northam is solid, and Thurman is great as the
needy, greedy Charlotte.
There is some fascination in James’s vision of this femme fatale, an avatar of devouring, destabilising feminine sexuality. It feels very Victorian, as does the obsession with money-marriage, but then perhaps it’s a good idea to reflect on whether we have come as far in a century as we think we have.