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Movie Review
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Music Review
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Column
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[06/24/99]

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By Geoff Edgers
[06/23/99]

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But then, he's the soul of the movie, and Parker knows it. "An Ideal Husband" at times has a kind of "Masterpiece Theatre" veneer to it, a surface sheen that's a little thick and gloppy. Early on, we're treated to a montage of fussy evening ties being straightened, a necklace being secured around a woman's neck, with Charlie Mole's overbearing string music swirling madly in the background: It all seems calculated to churn up excitement, a promise that there's lots of dazzle, glamour and intrigue to come. "An Ideal Husband" actually does deliver all those things, but mostly in a pleasurably understated way -- no need for the noisy signals. Parker, who himself adapted Wilde's play for the movie, takes what to purists may be an unforgivable number of liberties with the story, fleshing out the plot and even adding dialogue. Some of the additions (a quasi seduction scene between Everett and Julianne Moore, for example) work well; other times, the movie seems a little overcrowded with furniture, as if it might have been improved if some of the minor enhancements -- an extra scene or exchange here or there -- had been stripped back.

An Ideal Husband Directed by Oliver Parker Starring Jeremy Northam, Rupert Everett, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore

But overall, Parker strikes just the right balance of lightness and gravity, giving Wilde's wit lots of air (the only way to show how, a good 100 years later, it still breathes) instead of locking it up tight. The hub of the story is a potential political scandal: Sir Robert Chiltern (Jeremy Northam) is a rich and successful politician married to (and adored by) the dutiful, intelligent Gertrude (Cate Blanchett). He finds himself cornered by the scheming Mrs. Cheveley (Julianne Moore), who's in possession of a letter that reveals a secret about his past that could ruin his career and his marriage -- she hopes to blackmail him into using his political influence to bolster the image of a risky canal scheme she's invested in heavily. Chiltern turns to his friend Lord Goring -- who, it turns out, has become smitten with Chiltern's younger sister Mabel -- for help. Goring -- who, for all his sidelong, gentlemanly bluster, has a heart that beats true -- drops everything to oblige, opening the door to myriad mishaps and misunderstandings.

Blanchett -- after playing very different roles in "Elizabeth" and "Pushing Tin" -- continues to be one of those actresses you watch to see what she'll come up with next. Her Gertrude is restrained and proper, a demanding, almost prissy, perfectionist, as Wilde wrote her. But Blanchett is also able to cut through to something that's ineffably touching about the character: "The world seemed to me finer because you were in it," she tells her husband when she learns of his transgressions, and her suffering is easy to read in her liquid eyes. Blanchett captures perfectly the sense that Gertrude is finding her own disillusionment harder to deal with even than her husband's imperfections: She's that much of a perfectionist, and her sudden helplessness throws her.

Next page | Rupert Everett in love with Minnie Driver? Now that's acting