Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson make an unlikely pair of first business partners then lovers in The White Countess. Richardson in the title role is an exiled Russian countess who couldn't make it west to places like Paris, so they went east and she wound up in the foreign quarter of Shanghai.
One has to remember that before 1949 all the western powers and Japan had carved out spheres of influence for themselves where their law was supreme. No Chinese government was able to do anything about that since the British made the first move with the Opium War of 1841.
It is here that Ralph Fiennes a blind American former diplomat has made his home. He's pretty much disillusioned with the world and what western imperialism has done to it. It's his ambition to own an elegant place like Rick's in Casablanca where the rude awakenings of the world he helped make can be kept outside.
Part of that plan is that he needs a woman of class to front for him and who better than a Russian Countess who like the rest of Russian aristocracy supported the Whites against the Reds and lost all. She's doing what a girl has to do to survive and support her family. But Richardson does it ever so elegantly.
I'm sure the current Chinese government was more than willing to have a foreign film company shoot a film in Shanghai showing a bad period in their country's history. Old Shanghai is marvelously recreated by the Merchant-Ivory team.
This was a Redgrave family project with mother Vanessa and aunt Lynn to Natasha Richardson appearing as other Russian White exiles. Soon two of them would no longer be with us.
Fiennes and Richardson give some finely etched performances as people who need each other professionally and personally to make it from day to day. They are an unlikely pair, but who's to tell them?
Not the best Merchant-Ivory film, but pretty good.
One has to remember that before 1949 all the western powers and Japan had carved out spheres of influence for themselves where their law was supreme. No Chinese government was able to do anything about that since the British made the first move with the Opium War of 1841.
It is here that Ralph Fiennes a blind American former diplomat has made his home. He's pretty much disillusioned with the world and what western imperialism has done to it. It's his ambition to own an elegant place like Rick's in Casablanca where the rude awakenings of the world he helped make can be kept outside.
Part of that plan is that he needs a woman of class to front for him and who better than a Russian Countess who like the rest of Russian aristocracy supported the Whites against the Reds and lost all. She's doing what a girl has to do to survive and support her family. But Richardson does it ever so elegantly.
I'm sure the current Chinese government was more than willing to have a foreign film company shoot a film in Shanghai showing a bad period in their country's history. Old Shanghai is marvelously recreated by the Merchant-Ivory team.
This was a Redgrave family project with mother Vanessa and aunt Lynn to Natasha Richardson appearing as other Russian White exiles. Soon two of them would no longer be with us.
Fiennes and Richardson give some finely etched performances as people who need each other professionally and personally to make it from day to day. They are an unlikely pair, but who's to tell them?
Not the best Merchant-Ivory film, but pretty good.