A Good Woman

Colour, 35 mm
Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, USA, 2004, 93 min
Section: Focus on British Film (2000-2005)

Synopsis

Recent film adaptations of Oscar Wilde plays – An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest – remained faithful to the original period and English setting, but here director Mike Barker and scriptwriter Howard Himelstein savvily transpose Lady Windermere’s Fan to a community of British and American expatriates living on the Italian Amalfi coast in the 1930s. Young Lady Windermere (Scarlett Johansson) suspects her husband of having an affair with scandal-tainted newcomer Mrs Erlynne (Helen Hunt) and is on the verge of throwing away her own life and reputation by submitting to the advances of Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore). But the mysterious Mrs Erlynne has good reason to save her from folly. This attractive, sunny, witty drama provides an intriguing twist on the Wilde classic, and benefits from a strong cast, also including Tom Wilkinson and Milena Vukotić.

About the director

Mike Barker (b. 1965, Cambridgeshire) left school at 16, and worked as an unpaid camera assistant to cinematographer Mike Southon. His directing career began with TV documentaries such as 1992’s Eddie and The East Coast Bouffants. He made his feature-film debut with crime caper The James Gang, starring John Hannah and Toni Collette, which won him the attention of Hollywood: his next film, Twentieth Century Fox thriller Best Laid Plans, starred Alessandro Nivola and Reese Witherspoon. He returned to the UK to make To Kill a King, about the execution of English monarch Charles I, starring Dougray Scott, Tim Roth and Rupert Everett. Barker followed A Good Woman (2004) with kidnap drama Butterfly On a Wheel, starring Pierce Brosnan.