Shot entirely on location in Shanghai, the late Ismail Merchant's last production with director and partner James Ivory is one of the most ambitious the pair ever attempted.
Written by Kazuo Ishiguro, whose Remains of the Day was one of the producer-director pair's best films, it is the sort of bitter-sweet romantic drama that could have been a project for Wong Kar-Wei, the fine Chinese film-maker.
Ivory, however, is an entirely different kind of film-maker. Like Wong Kar-Wei, he deals as much in small details as large ones. But unlike him, he does not do passion, and this story of an American's relationship with a stranded Russian Countess is about longing and need, rather than full-blown love.
The American ( Ralph Fiennes) is blind, a distinguished former diplomat called Jackson who has given up on trying for world peace and is now holed up at the crossroads of political intrigue that was Shanghai in 1936.
He opens a nightclub where dangerous times can be reflected without violence; where Chinese Communists and Nationalists mix with conmen, businessmen and even Japanese interlopers.
He calls it The White Countess after Sofia (Natasha Richardson). As chief breadwinner for her dead husband's snobbish and ungrateful family, she works as a bar girl and dancer and has also occasionally worked as a call-girl. At Jackson's nightclub, however, she will not be asked to sell herself.
The other important character here is Matsuda (Hiroyuki Sanada) a casual friend of Jackson in the night haunts of Shanghai and a man we find to be preparing for the Japanese invasion of the city.
The film is beautifully mounted, though perhaps not quite sleazily enough imagined. It plays off its more intimate moments against the backdrop of the maelstrom of history, which is sketched in with some aplomb. And both
Fiennes and Richardson, without ever seeming as obsessed with each other as they should, play with fine judgement.
It is arguably too long for its slow and sometimes stately pace, and Ishiguro's reflective original screenplay doesn't always dovetail too well with Ivory's direction.
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The result is that the watcher will either become restive or find themselves immersed in a film that refuses to make the sort of concessions that Hollywood would certainly have required. With a little patience, The White Countess will remain with you longer than most.
The White Countess
Cert: PG
