In The Painted Veil, Edward Norton plays Walter Fane - an Englishman of the 1920s, a doctor, a cuckold - with a terseness that is terrifying.
Married out of his league to Kitty, a pretty Londoner of a higher social order, but of no particular purpose in life, Walter uses the discovery of her infidelity to exact a twisted form of vengeance.
That is, to throw Kitty (a graceful and amazing Naomi Watts) into the midst of a cholera epidemic.
Early in this understated but roiling melodrama, adapted from the Somerset Maugham novel in illuminating strokes by screenwriter Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) and director John Curran (We Don't Live Here Anymore), newlyweds Walter and Kitty move from London to Shanghai. He's a young and earnest bacteriologist, gazing into microscopes, and she, a bacteriologist's wife, idle and adrift, begins gazing into the eyes of a smooth-talking British vice consul (Liev Schreiber).
Soon Kitty and this man, Charlie Townsend, are sneaking off to bed together. And not long thereafter, Walter, who is neither as oblivious nor as foolish as people make out, discovers them.
In a moment of stark confrontation that seems terribly un-British for its emotional frankness, and for its transparent cruelty, it is decided that Walter and Kitty will move to a remote village in central China. Walter has accepted a post in this rugged outback, where he will do research to try to stem the decimating disease. And so Kitty, chastened and humiliated, accompanies him, in what seems an act of fatal resignation - of suicide, even. Bodies are dropping left and right, and no one knows what to do.
Beautifully photographed, with costumes and locales that match the best of the Merchant-Ivory imprimatur, The Painted Veil is a story about forgiveness, and one man's struggle to find it in his soul. Set against the tumult of 1920s China, where the colonials went from being welcome guests to suspect intruders, the film hinges on Norton's and Watt's performances, and both are at the top of their game.
Tall, thin and tight as a knot, Norton gives Walter a gloomy rage that is slow-burning and strong. Watts conveys her character's flightiness and profound helplessness, and then her awakening - her self-discovery - in the hellish isolation of a town strewn with cadavers. She's great.
