Early on in The Painted Veil, self-absorbed Kitty Garstin ponders her future. Attractive, moneyed, and eligible enough, she is nonetheless on the verge of becoming an old maid—and her lone suitor is one Walter Fane, an insistent, penniless, and seemingly personality-free doctor on leave from his post in China. As unlikely as an acceptance might be, he nonetheless impulsively proposes. When Kitty finally understands the extent of her family’s disdain, she equally impulsively accepts Fane’s proposal.

As she departs the family home, she sets down a heart-shaped box of candy that Fane has brought, and leaves it behind—and it’s clear that the gesture is intentional, that director John Curran wants us to ask questions. Is she leaving her heart behind? Is she setting it aside in favor of something inferior? Is it a heartless decision she makes? Is love out of the equation? Does she even have a heart?

The Painted Veil—a project of artistic passion for partners Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, as well as Watts’ prior collaborator, Curran—is both maddening and refreshing in its refusal to answer these questions in the style to which we have become accustomed. There are no pat answers here. The tale of Kitty Fane’s journey toward love, loss, and restoration is both revealing—as the veil of Kitty’s self-absorption is lifted to reveal the truth of life, death, and Walter’s passion—and mystifying.

It’s easy to see why Somerset Maugham’s novel has now thrice been adapted to the screen (first in 1934, with Garbo as Kitty, and again in 1957 in the loosely adapted The Seventh Sin). The story takes us to exotic 1920s Shanghai and into the midst of squalor and death—a cholera outbreak at a remote Chinese village. It’s an intriguing look at the inbred and corrupt lives of low-level third-world diplomats. It also examines the punitive aftermath of an indulgent and gratuitous adultery.

The film also lets us inside the head of novelist Maugham, who was raised in the world of diplomacy, at one point considered a career in the ministry, and later studied medicine for three years. Curiously, according to the film’s publicity, it took the insistence of actor Edward Norton—who plays Kitty’s physician spouse—to bring a realistic level of medical detail to the story. Still, as filmed, the story mirror’s Maugham’s own experience as a World War I field medic. “I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain,” he once wrote. “I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief.” All of these elements come into play as the Fanes confront the scope of an all-too-realistic cholera outbreak that grows beyond the boundaries of a single village.

As Fane, Norton is a far cry from the dynamic personalities he portrayed in Primal Fear, Fight Club, Rounders, 25^th Hour, and Heist. Here he is as controlled as he is calculating. In fact, Norton’s Walter Fane is almost inscrutable. While Kitty’s transformational arc is understandable—perhaps because of its predictability—the prevailing sense we get of Walter is one of unpredictability. His first impression of Kitty is romantic and baseless; yet he’s a scientist. His desire to marry her and take her to China is irrational, particularly given his profession. Knowing that she is vain and shallow, he nonetheless stacks the deck against her and then reacts vindictively because she betrays him. “It was silly of us to look for qualities in each other that we never had,” he bitterly remarks. He knows that she is inclined to a particular kind of sin, yet apparently expects her to remain spotless.

In this regard, Fane is distinctly unlike Maugham. “It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others,” said the novelist, “unless they personally affect me.” In the context of the story, Maugham’s voice is found in the diminutive diplomat Waddington—a dissipated careerist who can only watch as the Fanes make each other suffer. It’s also found in the voice of the local Mother Superior who compares Kitty’s struggle with Walter to her own struggle with God. “We’ve settled into a relationship of peaceful indifference,” she tells Kitty.

But the real surprise with Walter—and the real treat of this film—is that he turns out not to be the man that either Kitty or the audience expect. While we instinctively know that Kitty will emerge from her chrysalis, we have no such expectation for Walter. When he does manage, with Kitty, to find love and redemption, it hardly seems credible.

And yet, I suspect, that’s precisely the point. As finely scripted by veteran screenwriter Ron Nyswaner, this is a story told almost entirely from Kitty’s point of view. Walter’s transformation, therefore, is surprising to us because—and this is really the point—it’s a complete surprise to Kitty. Her reconciliation with Walter comes as much of a shock to her as reconciliation with God is to the repentant sinner in the song “Amazing Grace.” It’s hard to believe that the God of love and mercy is the same God we once saw only as cold, distant, jealous, vindictive, and capricious.

And yet, at the end of things, there Walter is: the sacrificial healer, the merciful lover, the one who always saw beauty where others saw only shallow self-absorption. And maybe this particular Walter was always there, only Kitty could never see it. And when she did, well… As Diana Rigg’s Mother Superior observes, “When love and duty are one, then grace is within you.” No longer need Kitty fear an avenging spirit. And when she returns to London, she’s truly found her heart.

“Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between two people,” says the film’s tagline. And sometimes it’s the distance between a sinner and salvation. Sometimes, The Painted Veil seems to say, it’s even both.

The Painted Veil is rated PG-13 “for some mature sexual situations, partial nudity, disturbing images, and brief drug content.” This is a movie for mature audiences, to be sure—but mostly because the vast majority of moviegoers who will be able to sit through this film without squirming much will likely be adults. There’s no action. There are no explosions. There aren’t many guns, and precious little violence. But what the movie does have is entirely appropriate for its target audience—reflective adults who tolerate (or like) arty movies—and entirely skips the salaciousness of similar projects. This film may bore you to tears, but if you wanted to see it in the first place, it will probably not offend you.

For further thoughts on The Painted Veil and Watts’ performance, see my comments in Painted Veil Redux.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a press screening of The Painted Veil.