june-86154 With Box Office statistic: Opening Weekend: £130,193 (UK) (13 May 2005)Gross: $223,144 (USA) (17 February 2006) It's not a box office movie. Talk about story: the story goes very slow. Dialogue and story is not a strong structure. Seems like the script is way far to perfect. And with a lot of big name actor and actress appeared in the movie, they can do much better than that. Beside the beautiful costume which is can find in many movie so far after this movie, I prefer a lot of other mover would be better with the better script, structure, tell story and better make. It's really disappointed see the way this movie come out, it appeared with Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson with a beautiful handbill and vintage costume but very disappoint in the movie as a whole.

James Hitchcock This is the third screen version of Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan"; earlier versions, neither of which I have seen, were made by Ernst Lubitsch and Otto Preminger. "A Good Woman", a phrase which occurs a number of times in the script, was Wilde's original title for his play. He was persuaded to change it, but the filmmakers have revived it, probably because the plot of the film is significantly different from that of the play.The greatest difference is that the film is not set in the London of 1892 but in Amalfi in 1930. (Strangely for a film set in thirties Italy there is no mention of Mussolini or Fascism). The main characters are all wealthy Britons or Americans on holiday. Lord and Lady Windermere become Robert and Meg Windermere, a pair of American newlyweds on their honeymoon. (In the play Lord and Lady Windermere had been married for about two years and had a young son; Lord Windermere's Christian name was Arthur).Meg wrongly believes that Robert is having an affair with Stella Erlynne, an ageing New York society beauty notorious for her scandalous affairs, especially with married men. Her faith in her husband shattered, she resolves to leave him for Lord Darlington, a wealthy British playboy visiting Amalfi on his yacht. Mrs Erlynne, fearing that Meg is about to take a step which will ruin her life and reputation, takes a dramatic step to prevent this and to bring about a reconciliation between Meg and Robert.The point of relocating the action from the drawing-rooms of London to the Amalfi coast was presumably to provide some spectacular scenery to make the film more visually attractive, and the point of making some of the characters American was presumably to provide roles for Hollywood names like Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson. The point of updating the action from the 1890s to the 1930s escapes me.Transplanting the action of an Oscar Wilde play, whether in place or in time, is in any case an operation fraught with risk. Wilde is sometimes regarded as a primarily comic playwright, but of the four so-called "drawing-room comedies" on which his reputation as a dramatist primarily rests only "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a pure comedy. The others, including "Lady Windermere's Fan", although they contain a good deal of witty dialogue, are essentially dramas on a serious theme, combining satire with social comment. The prime target of Wilde's satire is the hypocrisy of the British upper classes among whom his plays are set, especially their double standards about sexual matters. They are prepared to turn a blind eye to adultery provided that it remains discreet, but can be mercilessly unforgiving, especially to erring wives, when it results in public scandal or in pregnancy outside marriage. Many of Wilde's characters, including Mrs Erlynne, are hiding a guilty secret. His interest in this topic was doubtless due to the fact that he was himself obliged to keep his sexuality secret and that, as a gay man, he belonged to a class even more despised by society than unmarried mothers or unfaithful wives.One problem with this film is that, by the 1930s, British society was rather more tolerant towards divorce than it had been in the 1890s, and American society more tolerant still. (There were a number of Hollywood films about divorce during the period, although the British cinema generally steered clear of the topic). The filmmakers do seem to have been aware of this problem, as they make a few changes to the plot to compensate, but unfortunately these changes upset the subtle balance of Wilde's play.Wilde's Mrs Erlynne was a woman who made one mistake in her youth and spent the rest of her life paying for it. As such a person would not have been shunned in 1930s New York in the same way as she would have been in 1890s London, the scriptwriters here make her a woman who has led a notoriously promiscuous life, but Helen Hunt's Stella Erlynne comes across as so cold, selfish and vicious that even her redeeming act of self-sacrifice towards the end is not enough for the audience to accept her as the "good woman" of the title. Wilde's Lord Darlington, despite his faults, was at least genuinely in love with Lady Windermere. Here he is an obvious cad with no feelings for anyone except himself, but the result of this change is to make us wonder why Meg, or any woman in her right mind, could ever have contemplated eloping with such a bounder.The scriptwriters obviously felt that "Lady Windermere's Fan" does not contain enough Wildean bons mots, because they try to remedy the deficiency by importing some of his more famous epigrams from other plays, not realising that, outside their original context, these witticisms either lose their meaning or become liable to misinterpretation. The line, for instance, about America being the only country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of civilisation does not reflect Wilde's personal view but rather the prejudices of a bitter, cynical character in "A Woman of No Importance", the play from which it is taken.The best acting contributions come from Tom Wilkinson as Mrs Erlynne's lover Lord Augustus and Stephen Campbell Moore as Darlington, the only actors who seem at home with Wilde's style. Most of the others make little impression. Johansson, who can be so good in the right role, as she was in "Girl with a Pearl Earring", makes an insipid, milk-and-water Meg.My overall impression was that the filmmakers were trying to make a "heritage cinema" style drama, along the lines of "A Month by the Lake", another film about Anglo-American holidaymakers in thirties Italy. Unfortunately, although this style may be well suited to the works of H.E. Bates, it seems quite wrong for Oscar Wilde. 5/10

harborrat28 This is another movie in the list of "What Does Anyone See In Scarlet Johansen" films. As in Vicky, Christina, Barcelona, the porcine-faced Johansson is totally unconvincing as the object of the desire of a man with appeal and choice who is driven by anything other than his small brain. It calls to mind the old punchline "If you can't sing Melancholy Baby," show us your tits."In this case, both Johansson & Helen Hunt were not good choices for the roles they were called upon to play. The Wilde original calls for sophisticated (& probably necessarily British) actors with talent for the drawing rooms of the 19th century.Tom Wilkinson & the sets/setting were the only redeeming things in this otherwise pretty badly acted film.

Chrysanthepop Based on Wilde's work, 'A Good Woman' is a decent enough film to be enjoyed once. Not surprisingly, there are some great clever dialogues. The costumes are very good and the locations are exceptional. The use of subtle comedy with drama is impressive but the drama is not engaging enough to stay in the viewers mind after the film has ended. It is quite easily a forgettable film that can be enjoyed only at the moment. On the technical front, the film is okay. Cinematography is uneven and flat at times. It's great to see Helen Hunt after a long time on screen. She looks a lot older (than she actually was at the time) but at the same time very sensual. However, her nuances do not exactly much the traits of a woman from that time period. Scarlett Johansson has that clueless look that we have witnessed in pretty much everything else she's done. Now the best part of the film is Tom Wilkinson who clearly steals the show with a delightfully endearing comedic performance. As stated earlier, watch this romantic comedy just to enjoy it for the moment. It's much better than the silly fluffy rom-coms so often produced in America.