by MARK SLUTSKY

It’s always a pleasure to see Edward Norton exercise his considerable acting skills in a decent project, and more so when he’s in a period piece: the man wears a linen suit well. His latest, The Painted Veil, is apparently a labour of love (he co-produced the film with leading lady Naomi Watts), an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, previously brought to the screen in 1934 with Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall. You can tell why Norton wanted to make the film, which is directed very ably by John Curran: the role of cuckolded doctor Walter Fane is a meaty one, and he gives one of his best performances.

Norton’s Fane is, as the movie opens, a timid, shy, but direct doctor set in the colonial Shanghai of the 1920s. Falling for fickle London society girl Kitty (Naomi Watts), he proposes, and she accepts, to be rid of her hectoring family. Bored of her life in China, though, the young bride is soon catting around with the rakish Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber), at least until their illicit trystings are discovered.

Here the movie takes a turn, as the gentle Norton discovers depths of anger and resentment within himself and drags Watts off to the provinces, where he hopes to treat a cholera epidemic—a disease, you get the sense, that he wouldn’t mind catching himself, or allowing his wife to catch. Their tense relationship—playing out against the backdrop of a horrible plague and growing Chinese discontent with the British—soon becomes intolerable, and Watts’s attempt at redemption is the crux of the story.

If it sounds old-fashioned, it is. Curran adopts a very classic style for the film, though he never goes so far as pastiche. Unlike a lot of recent period pieces (like The White Countess), he never mistakes lovely locations or an interesting setting for atmosphere or a compelling story, respectively.

Norton’s excellent performance, a wonderful slow burn and cool-down again, is complemented well by Watts, whose role is more foregrounded and who has to carry most of the picture. The two really show their chops here, and their chemistry, as they warily circle each other, is strong.

Toby Jones, last seen as Truman Capote in Infamous, shows up in a deceptively subtle role as locally-stationed British official Waddington, and in the movie’s most surprising bit of casting, Dame Diana Rigg, she of The Avengers (and who does very little movie work), does a virtually unrecognizable turn as a missionary nun.

While the story’s somewhat dated “natives are restless” moments may be a little too old-fashioned (you’ve got to wince at the scene of a pale white woman being chased down winding streets by an angry, characterless ethnic horde), but they don’t really detract from the movie’s pleasures, which include a lovely score by Alexandre Desplat, largely played on solo piano.

The Painted Veil opens Friday, Dec. 29

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