Love and marriage

>> Terence Davies' The House of Mirth is no slap and tickle

by JOANNE LATIMER

Terence Davies is known for directing films torn from the pages of his own book--basically, English coming of age tales. His latest film, however, is a screen adaptation of someone else's story. He has done a film version of Edith Wharton's parlour drama, The House of Mirth. But don't expect a slap and tickle. Settle in for well over three hours and appreciate its subtle cunning.

If this book were a TV show on Bravo, it'd be called Social Climbing and the City, circa 1910. It's about the manoeuvrings of the upper classes of Manhattan, where the class system rivalled anything going in the U.K. Young women were expected to marry wealthy men and the men were expected to remain wealthy.

"But it's still a very modern story," insists Davies, on the phone from his London home. "It's about society's obsession with what we look like and how much money we have. Wharton's book? It's about what we look like and how much money we have. Our narcissism stays the same."

Davies found himself following Martin Scorsese, who adapted The Age of Innocence, another Wharton book, for the screen. "That film was a masterpiece, but I didn't learn anything applicable from it because each book has its own template," explains Davies, who recalls being more inspired by William Wyler's The Heiress, another film about class and marriage. "But the biggest challenge for me wasn't so much the genre as the linear narrative. My other films are more cyclical, about memory and remembering, with no importance attached to the linear progression."

The House of Mirth is all linear progression. It follows the travails of a 29-year-old woman, Lily (Gillian Anderson), who needs to land a husband, and fast. Her options are expiring and so is her "modest income"--that's the kind of thing people say in this film. Lily loses her social standing through a scandal and becomes a failed member of the working classes. She hits the skids and sees the folly in denying her love for an unsuitably poor lawyer (Eric Stoltz).

"It's a tragic mistake to try to modernize the women in a period piece," explains Davies, musing on how the film will resonate with women today. "They simply aren't modern. If you try to force it, you'll ruin the tone of the film. The other tragic mistake is to over-light the picture. Because the sets cost so bloody much to build, the tendency is to light up every corner. I was trying to light my film more like a Vermeer painting."

Having conquered the book's linear progression and lighting temptations, he was dismayed by the text's anti-Semitism and its false sentimentality for the working class. "The anti-Semitism disfigures the book," says Davies. "After the Holocaust, it's too offensive and she hadn't an ear for the working class at all. She didn't know them and couldn't write them. It's sometimes better to say nothing."

The House of Mirth opens Friday, April 6