Dr Walter gets married to the beautiful Kitty but soon finds out that she is cheating on him. Battling his way through problems, he heads to China to fight a dreaded disease spread in a smal... Read allDr Walter gets married to the beautiful Kitty but soon finds out that she is cheating on him. Battling his way through problems, he heads to China to fight a dreaded disease spread in a small village.Dr Walter gets married to the beautiful Kitty but soon finds out that she is cheating on him. Battling his way through problems, he heads to China to fight a dreaded disease spread in a small village.
- Awards
- 11 wins & 13 nominations
Sally Hawkins
- Mary
- (scenes deleted)
Gwing-Gai Lee
- Angry Chinese Man
- (as Johnny Lee)
Ian Renwick
- Geoffrey Denison
- (as Ian Rennick)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaEdward Norton personally recruited Naomi Watts for her role in this movie.
- GoofsDuring the love scene between Kitty And Walter, Kitty takes Walter's shirt off while they are kissing. In the next shot, Walter has his shirt back on and in the shot after that, when they are falling onto the bed, he has the shirt off again.
- Quotes
Walter Fane: It was silly of us to look for qualities in each other that we never had.
Featured review
Love in the times of cholera....
The Painted Veil is my favorite Somerset Maugham novel so I was concerned about how much justice could be done to this hauntingly beautiful story of revenge, love and redemption. Is it possible to take a masterpiece and make a decent film out of it in Hollywood? Apparently yes! Could the movie have been better - absolutely, but does it get the job done well? I'd say yes.
Ed Norton is Walter - a bacteriologist stationed in Shangai. In Londn he mets and falls in love with the beautiful Kitty (Naomi Watts), hasty marriage and honeymoon in Venice later they are both in China. He is busy - she is bored. And what better way to relieve boredom than an extramarital affair with Charlie - the philandering consular official (Liev Schrieber)? But Walter discovers the affair and decides to volunteer to a cholera stricken province and take Kitty with him. Charlie was never serious anyway so off they go into the jaws of death. In the cholera infested back of beyond Walter and Kitty discover more about each other than they did in many months of marriage. A mutual respect grows into something else but it is a cholera infested region after all. So the tale must have a tragic ending and it does. But it leaves one with a sense of relief as the camera finally moves away from the oppressive dark tones and into light.
The movie has beautiful performances by Ed Norton and Ms. Watts. His serious, then almost sinister, then enlighetened Walter is the perfect foil to her luminous, wicked and then vulnerable Kitty. Liev Schrieber is good in the brief role as Charlie and all the supporting cast is very good indeed. The locale is stunning and the mood is brilliantly captured in the dark, the shadows and moments of light.
Are there Hollywood moments? Of course there are, mostly during the growing attraction between the lead pair there are the clichéd moments of "intoxication", his looking suddenly more attractive and youthful, her moments with the orphanage kids. But none of it is over the top. The movie is full of mood, sensuous beauty and emotion. I enjoyed the film and I think Mr. Maugham is there somewhere nodding his head in approval at a job well done.
Ed Norton is Walter - a bacteriologist stationed in Shangai. In Londn he mets and falls in love with the beautiful Kitty (Naomi Watts), hasty marriage and honeymoon in Venice later they are both in China. He is busy - she is bored. And what better way to relieve boredom than an extramarital affair with Charlie - the philandering consular official (Liev Schrieber)? But Walter discovers the affair and decides to volunteer to a cholera stricken province and take Kitty with him. Charlie was never serious anyway so off they go into the jaws of death. In the cholera infested back of beyond Walter and Kitty discover more about each other than they did in many months of marriage. A mutual respect grows into something else but it is a cholera infested region after all. So the tale must have a tragic ending and it does. But it leaves one with a sense of relief as the camera finally moves away from the oppressive dark tones and into light.
The movie has beautiful performances by Ed Norton and Ms. Watts. His serious, then almost sinister, then enlighetened Walter is the perfect foil to her luminous, wicked and then vulnerable Kitty. Liev Schrieber is good in the brief role as Charlie and all the supporting cast is very good indeed. The locale is stunning and the mood is brilliantly captured in the dark, the shadows and moments of light.
Are there Hollywood moments? Of course there are, mostly during the growing attraction between the lead pair there are the clichéd moments of "intoxication", his looking suddenly more attractive and youthful, her moments with the orphanage kids. But none of it is over the top. The movie is full of mood, sensuous beauty and emotion. I enjoyed the film and I think Mr. Maugham is there somewhere nodding his head in approval at a job well done.
helpful•91
- HeadleyLamarr
- Jul 19, 2007
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $19,400,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $8,060,487
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $51,086
- Dec 24, 2006
- Gross worldwide
- $26,910,847
- Runtime2 hours 5 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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