It still seems likely that Lily will soon find an appropriate husband until she travels by yacht with Bertha Dorset (Laura Linney) and her husband George to the Mediterranean. Bertha has recently ended an affair with Lawrence Selden, and she plans to have another extramarital sexual relationship on the trip. This leads George to grouse, "Wives may do as they wish. Husbands are expected to be like money--influential, but silent."
Bertha’s purpose in asking Lily to accompany her and George on the yacht trip is devious: Recognizing that Lily is a woman of high principle, Bertha intends that Lily will provide a harmless distraction for her husband, thus freeing her to pursue her latest romantic interest. One night Bertha remains ashore on the French Riviera with her lover and does not come back to the yacht until 7 o’clock the next morning. A distraught George discusses Bertha’s overnight absence with Lily, who is appalled. But Bertha somehow manages to quickly patch things up with George, and at a dinner party on shore that evening, Bertha forbids Lily to return to the yacht.
The incident on the Riviera ruins Lily’s reputation, and her life becomes a downhill slide from that point on. The diabolically clever Bertha manages to divert attention away from her infidelity by making it look instead as though Lily was guilty of some improper behavior with her husband, and the weak George acquiesces to his wife by remaining silent. The resulting innuendo is so damaging to Lily’s social standing that she is never able to recover. As Lily’s cousin Grace remarks, "They have minds like moral flypaper. They can forgive a woman almost anything except the loss of her good name." Lily gamely tries to carry on, but her internal code of behavior is hopelessly at odds with the rules of her society, and inevitably her story ends in tragedy.Davies’ movie keeps the strong plot of Wharton’s novel and preserves much of its dialogue as well. The film’s look is splendid, with its opulent mansions and country estates and characters who look like they have just stepped out of John Singer Sargent paintings. It seems fitting that when the characters take in an opera, they go to a performance of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. And it also seems fitting that after the movie’s melancholy ending, Borodin’s haunting "String Quartet Number 2 in D" plays on the soundtrack as the closing credits scroll past.
The acting in The House of Mirth is generally good, and the cast never says or does anything that breaks the period-piece illusion of the story. Gillian Anderson gives a stunning performance as Lily Bart, and I think she deserved to be nominated for an Academy Award. Anderson is in nearly every scene, and at no time was I reminded of her television series The X-Files. From reading Wharton’s novel, you might expect Lily to be a rather delicate creature, but Anderson portrays her as a robust woman of strong character. This way of playing Lily makes it all the more heartbreaking when she is unable to avoid being dragged under by society. As Lily’s friend Carry tells her, "My dear, the world is vile."
It’s interesting that Davies’ The House of Mirth is the second outstanding movie adaptation of a classic Wharton novel, the other being Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film The Age of Innocence. I think Scorsese’s film did a better job of capturing the essence of upper-class New York society circa 1900, but Davies’ movie packs a much greater emotional wallop. In any event, I highly recommend both these films--they would make a whale of a double feature!
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