Susan Granger’s review of “HOUSE OF MIRTH” (Sony Pictures Classics)
If you only associate Gillian Anderson with FBI agent Dana Scully on TV’s “X-Files,” you’ll be surprised at her admirable, even astonishing, acting range as Lily Bart, the tragic heroine of British writer/director Terence Davies’ screen adaptation of Edith Wharton’s chilling novel of manners and mores, set in 1905. It was a time when New York society was a tight-knit, insular group, a handful of wealthy families who traveled together, following the seasons in various opulent locales, with little to do but ruthlessly scrutinize and gossip about each other’s behavior. Bright, brittle and bold, Lily Bart scandalized her privileged peers. An orphan dependent on a rich aunt, she knew she had to make a “suitable” marriage but her heart belonged to an aloof and equally penniless lawyer, played by Eric Stoltz. “Why is it, when we meet, we always play this elaborate game?” she asks him. But society’s game is even more cruel as Lily Bart proves to be as unlucky in love as she is at cards. With her titian hair, porcelain complexion and hourglass silhouette, Gillian Anderson radiates an intimate, stunning elegance, even as she is accosted by an adulterous financier, Dan Aykroyd, and her reputation is being viciously destroyed by a duplicitous “friend”, Laura Linney (“You Can Count On Me”). Although a contemporary audience, used to prenuptial agreements and trophy wives, may find it slow-paced and somber, it’s a painful reminder of a puritanical era, not so long ago, when a respectable woman’s only option was to be a beautiful adornment on a wealthy man’s arm. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The House of Mirth” is a melodramatic, melancholy 7. It falls into the genre of what used to be known as a “woman’s picture” and, despite the title, it’s anything but merry.
