The Painted Veil
Starring Naomi Watts
Edward Norton
Liev
Schreiber
The Painted Veil is a 2006 film directed by John Curran and stars
Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, and Liev Schreiber. The Painted Veil is based on the
novel of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham. The film has a limited release
date for December 20, 2006. Most of the film was shot in China, as director John
Curran explained "We wanted this movie to be distinctly Chinese. We didn’t
want it to look like a film that you could shoot in Canada or Mexico or Italy".
The scouts eventually settled on Guilin, Guangxi in southern China, after a search
around Hunan province.
Plot
Kitty Garstin
(Watts) is a pretty, shallow young woman from a well-to-do London family, under
pressure from her parents to find a husband. Soon after she meets him at a party,
she marries Dr. Walter Fane (Norton), an earnest, socially awkward doctor on leave
from China, even though she does not love him. The Fanes move to Shanghai, where
Dr. Fane is stationed in a government lab studying infectious diseases. Soon bored,
Kitty meets Charles Townsend (Schreiber), a married British diplomat who is a
serial womanizer, and has an affair with him. When Walter finds out, he gives
her an ultimatum: come with him to the Chinese interior to assist with a cholera
epidemic relief effort for which he has volunteered, or face a divorce on the
grounds of her adultery. Kitty turns to Townsend to persuade him to divorce his
wife and marry her. When Townsend, to Kitty's surprise but not Walter's, refuses
to leave his wife for Kitty, she chooses to travel inland with her husband. At
first, Walter and Kitty barely speak to each other. Kitty is miserable, with nothing
to do. She decides to volunteer at a local orphanage run by French nuns, which
her husband visits often outside of his lab work. In this setting Kitty begins
to see her apparently-cold husband in a new light, as she learns what a selfless
and caring person he can be. The Fanes' marriage blossoms into love. She grows
to care about the children at the orphanage, while Walter tends to the sick and
looks for a way to stop the spread of the epidemic despite resistance from the
populace and the local warlord in the politically torn China of the 1920s. After
their reconciliation Kitty learns she is pregnant, but is unsure whether Charlie
or Walter is the father. Just as the local cholera problem is coming under control,
diseased refugees from elsewhere pour into the area, forcing Walter to set up
a refugee camp outside town. Walter contracts cholera and dies, devastating Kitty,
who returns to London. Five years later, walking with her young son Walter, Kitty
runs into Townsend on the street. Townsend makes small talk with them both for
a short while and begins to suggest a meeting with Kitty. However, Kitty rejects
his overtures and walks away.
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