Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn in "Up at the Villa."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we give this film a: Stars: Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn Director: Philip Haas Rated: PG-13, with violence, profanity and adult themes Length: 115 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(May 19, 2000) -- Having your cake and eating it as well seems decidedly too assertive for the stuffy Brits at the center of Up at the Villa, a surprising and romantic new film based on a novella by Somerset Maugham.

Thus, Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas), a financially troubled British expatriate in pre-World War II Italy, seems shocked at the notion of taking a lover. She is about to accept a marriage proposal from the stiff and lifeless Sir Edgar Swift (James Fox) and is taken aback when her friend, the Princess San Ferdinando (Anne Bancroft), suggests that marriage does not preclude other dalliances.

Mary, however, has no idea of just what she's capable of, in this film written by Belinda Haas and directed by her husband, Philip, the team responsible for the eerily good Angels and Insects. Before the story is finished, she will have formed alliances and fallen in love with people she doesn't think she likes, tossed herself into a one-night stand and even blackmailed a highly placed Fascist. Think of it as having your cake, eating it -- and still managing to lose weight.

Mary seems a particularly bloodless sort at the start. A guest of friends in Italy (during roughly the same period as the vastly inferior Tea With Mussolini), she is a widow whose husband had the poor taste to die penniless. So Mary is resigned to marriage with Sir Edgar, who will then take her off to his new job as governor of Bengal (the irony being, of course, that this prestigious post would disappear in less than a decade when India achieves independence).

After popping the question, Sir Edgar leaves for business, giving her a few days to consider. At one of the princess' soirees, Mary meets the raffish American Rowley Flint (Sean Penn, in a decidedly Cary Grant-like role). Attracted and yet repelled, she seems to encourage Rowley, right up to the point that she slaps his face when he tells her she shouldn't marry Sir Edgar. Then, on the same eventful night, she finds herself playing host to an impoverished Austrian refugee, Karl (Jeremy Davies).

Having fed him, she finds herself bedding him as well, a romantic gesture inspired by a story the princess has told her. She figures one passionate night that will make a beautiful memory for both of them isn't beyond the pale. That's fine in theory until Karl returns the next night, announcing that he has changed his plans to leave Italy because he realizes he is in love with her. When she rejects him, he pulls a gun and kills himself.

Talk about your sticky wickets. All sorts of questions of propriety and scandal -- all of which impact negatively on her marriage to Sir Edgar -- present themselves. Scared and panicked, she calls Rowley, hoping he can find a way to make this suicide go away and leave her untouched. But every step she takes seems to involve telling a lie that leads to two more lies.

Having lived on her looks, she must now survive by her wits -- and keep those around her out of trouble. What begins as one of those repressed tales of unspoken longing turns into a story of suspense, treachery and potentially deadly politics.

Thomas has a way with a biting retort; she seems so coolly self-possessed that, when Mary falls apart at the thought of her situation, it is that much more moving. Yet this character is never a milquetoast; Thomas takes her from brittleness to an almost demonic flexibility, someone capable of the kind of moral relativism for which there is no room in the British code of honor depicted in this film.

Penn plays against the grain of virtually his entire career, as the suave but pragmatic Rowley. The sight of him in a dinner jacket is nothing new; he wore several in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown. What's different is the stylishness and sense of amusement that emerges, as well as a flipness that is never aggressively sarcastic.

Stick with Up at the Villa. Though it starts out looking like a tea-and-crumpets romance, it quickly transforms itself into something else. That recognition of interior lives of anguish and longing was what set Maugham and Evelyn Waugh apart from their contemporaries and is what lifts this film above the rest of the pack.