The Painted Veil 2006
The Painted Veil ★★ 2006 (PG-13)
The third film version of Maugham's 1925 novel takes some liberties and the leads can't engender much sympathy for their self-absorbed characters, although the locations are eye-catching. Flirty Kitty (Watts) impulsively marries serious bacteriologist Walter Fane (Norton) to get away from her family—far away, all the way to Shanghai. Bored, Kitty begins an affair with British consul Charlie Town-send (Schreiber); upon discovering her infidelity, Walter forces Kitty to join him in a remote area beset by a cholera outbreak, where he'll do medical research. Kitty finds herself helping out a group of nuns at their orphanage amidst the rise of Chinese nationalism (as if an epidemic and problematic marriage aren't trouble enough). 125m/C DVD . CH US Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Toby Jones, Diana Rigg, Anthony Wong; D: John Curran; W: Ron Nyswaner; C: Stuart Dryburgh; M: Alexandre Desplat. Golden Globes ‘07: Orig. Score.