Noel Coward wrote some great plays. He also wrote some clunkers, and the writing team of Stephan Elliott and Sheridan Jobbins is not good enough to make chicken salad out of a sow’s ear, as the saying goes. Elliott also directed "Easy Virtue," which might have worked if a better cast could have been assembled.
But Jessica Biel, as an American race car driver named Larita who meets and marries a wealthy Englishman in Monaco shortly after World War I, isn’t strong enough to carry the role, one which a Katharine Hepburn or an Emma Thompson could have made into something special. Larita is simply no match for her mother-in-law, played with real skill and no glamour by Kristin Scott Thomas. And when Ben Barnes turns out to be a lion in his wife’s bedroom but a lamb in his mother’s sitting room, it’s like the Confederate Army after Atlanta and Savannah, a few skirmishes, but no real fighting on the way to Appomattox.
The most interesting character is Jim, father of the bridegroom, in a fine portrayal by Colin Firth. Battered by his travails in World War I, really unable to face life and the world again, he spends his time tinkering and puttering in his garage, and it’s over automobile engines that he bonds with his daughter-in-law, becoming her only ally.
Larita is an independent spirit, and that’s the road along which she has constant collisions with Thomas, and since Thomas is driving a tank and Larita a motorcycle, the results become obvious. Still, there are a few bright scenes, like Larita following the hounds on a motorcycle, and making an almost-innocent remark about the history of the can-can to the two young ladies of the house, a remark that causes a major uproar during a Christmas pageant in the church.
Sadly, a couple of bright scenes are not enough, even though the English countryside looks gorgeous, and the dresses are nice.
At the Plaza Frontenac
-Joe