Easy Virtue (Stephan Elliott, 2008)

Oscar Wilde remains fresh because his aphorisms are evergreen. His twentieth-century successor Noël Coward, on the other hand, stales with every passing year because of being so tethered to a particular and narrow time and social milieu. Not that being so prolific could have helped either, with the inevitable dilution of novelty through increased output.
It's not that Easy Virtue is a dull piece, nor is Elliott's adaptation wholly without merit, propped up significantly by dependable casting in the form of Kristin Scott Thomas as the tyrannically snobbish materfamilias and Colin Firth as her sardonically disdainful husband. Playing the glamorous American who arrives unwanted into their stultifying landed gentry household as their son's new wife, Jessica Biel is a minor revelation too, projecting acid wit far more convincingly than the vacant Johanssens or Portmans she might otherwise have been bracketed with. It's just so insubstantial, the inbred status quo a house of straw for critique, the period detail sloppy and the bon mots raising no more than smirks and arched eyebrows.

4/10