John Curran's pretty melodrama rubs off a few of the barbed edges from W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel about love and infidelity in a time of cholera, but no matter: the centerpiece is Naomi Watts' outstanding portrayal of an adulteress redeemed. The Chinese interior, 1925: British bacteriologist Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) and his attractive wife, Kitty (Watts), arrive in Mei-tan-fu, a small, underdeveloped town decimated by a still-rampant outbreak of cholera. Walter hopes to help control the disease, but flashbacks reveal that Kitty's arrival owes nothing to humanitarian impulses. A frivolous, somewhat shallow society girl, Kitty never made the brilliant matc...
Released:
2006
Rated:
PG-13
Length:
125 mins