Up at the Villa (2000)

Strangely reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Philip Haas's Up at the Villa is a similarly insulated psychosexual drama detached from the larger world yet with consequences well beyond itself. As with Kubrick's final masterpiece, Up at the Villa is constructed around a self-centered character whose insecurities about marriage set a disastrous chain of events into motion. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Mary Panton, a comely Englishwoman staying at a villa in Florence, Italy, in the late 1930s. Sheltered by the goodwill of the British and American community there, Mary--with little money and few prospects for survival outside marriage--dithers over her uncertain destiny and dreams of independence.

Based on a novella by W. Somerset Maugham, Up At the Villa finds Mary forced to take charge of her life after a one-night stand with an Austrian immigrant (Jeremy Davies) leads to tragedy. Sean Penn plays a cavalier American playboy who helps her out in the nightmarish aftermath. Both he and Thomas approach Haas's artful film noir with intentionally mannered performances that blur the line between internal and external experience. The result is a kind of midnight journey through minefields of the subconscious.

Still, the film is not without weaknesses: getting a fix on Penn's roughly sketched character, for instance, proves unsatisfying given his clichéd roguishness. And Haas seems to be plucking derivative ideas from everywhere: there's a strange stretch in the second act in which he goes out of his way to make a Hitchcockian film that really does look and sound like a Hitchcock film. While the result is eerie, you have to wonder why Haas would be so blunt about it. --Tom Keogh Amazon.com

Good flick...but rent it....

Although I am no fan of Sean Penn, I found UP AT THE VILLA an interesting and well executed story. The protagonist is played by Kirsten Scott-Thomas, who demonstrates again that her strength lies in her ability to play a relatively honest and forthright woman who manages to get into one compromising situation after another involving fornication. Scott-Thomas' character in VILLA seems to have a penchant for becoming involved with the wrong sort of man, and in spite of her comment that she is not likely to engage in the same foolish acts she committed when she was younger, she does exactly that. Supposedly, she acts as she does in part because of her attraction to Penn's character, although as far as I am concerned there is no chemistry between them at all, so her statement rings hollow. This film is a thriller as opposed to a mystery. The only mystery is how can a woman who is so beautiful and smart do such stupid things? And yet, I cared what happened to her, so as she slipped down the slope, I hoped that somehow she would land on her feet. Whether she does or not is a matter of interpretation.

The setting of the story is a villa belonging to friends where Scott's impoverished character has stayed while she visited nearby Florence, Italy sometime just before the outbreak of hostilities in pre WWII Italy. The set with whom she mixes is composed largely of British ex-pats and a few Americans-comparable to the crowd in TEA WITH MUSSOLINI-although we discover little about any of them except the princess. Anne Bancroft plays the "princess-by-marriage" who has a little dirt on everyone, and she isn't afraid to use it in a crises. This attribute comes in handy because the princess has paperwork in her possession revealing the doings of one of the local officials-paperwork he would just as soon not see land in the hands of the new masters in Rome- those brown-shirt rogues who like order and efficiency and relative honesty in their underlings.
September 18, 2005

Way too much spare time

UP AT THE VILLA illustrates the mischief one can get into when burdened with too much spare time.

Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas), a widowed Brit whose husband recently died after squandering their fortune, blast his eyes, is residing in 1939 Florence. Chamberlain has just sold the Czechs down the Vltava, Mussolini is getting uppity, and war appears likely. Panton lives UP AT THE VILLA, the owners of which, friends of Mary's, are away. Mary spends her idle time swanning about with fellow expats and contemplating the not entirely welcome offer of marriage recently tendered from the aging, but rich, Sir Edgar Swift (James Fox), who's expecting any moment to be named the new Governor of Bengal.

One evening, Panton attends a lavish dinner put on by her friend, the Princess San Fernando (Anne Bancroft), which comes off swimmingly except for a wretched example of entertainment for hire by a refugee Austrian musician, Karl Richter (Jeremy Davies). Later, Mary almost runs the man down with her car, and subsequently invites him back to the villa for a meal. Feeling sorry for the young fellow's miserable life, and wanting to show him a good time, she sleeps with him believing it'll be no more than a one time tryst. But, he returns the next night and forces himself upon her while professing his undying love. After Panton rejects his advances, Richter kills himself with a pistol given by Swift to Mary for her protection in these unsettled times. So now, what's a poor girl to do with an inconvenient corpse, especially as Sir Edgar is soon due back and anticipating her answer to his proposal?

UP AT THE VILLA isn't a bad film so much as just unengaging. Panton is so imprudent and so lacking any real purpose in life that it's hard to care what sort of predicament she gets herself into. The man who eventually bails her out, a rich and maritally unfaithful traveling Yank named Rowley Flint (Sean Penn), is equally undeserving of audience sympathy if for no other reason than the director didn't develop his character enough. Is he a cad or a knight in shining armor? The local cop investigating Richter's death, Beppino Leopardi (Massimo Ghini), could perhaps have achieved some viewer goodwill if it wasn't for his SS-like black uniform and his unswerving allegiance to Fascism. Richter starts out with a boyish appeal, but swiftly loses it. Except for the well-intentioned and honorable Swift, there's no one here to like, and stewing in their own juice probably serves them all right. For this fictional group of misfits, the war probably did a service by forcing them into something less frivolous - like survival.

If Panton calls me up offering a quick tumble, I might award more than three stars. I can be bought. Otherwise, UP AT THE VILLA has marginal merit. February 19, 2005

Without Kristen Scott Thomas � 2 Stars

If there was ever a need for evidence that one great actor/actress cannot carry a mediocre film, "Up in the Villa" satisfies that need. Kristen Scott Thomas is asked to carry nearly the entire load in this film and she does marvelously; however, the story itself is pedestrian and the essence of stereotyping and cliché.

Set in Italy at the threshold of WW II, the film is the consummate exercise in pigeonholing. The Italian police are corrupt, brazen and supercilious; the European petty nobility are arrogant, easy to dislike and appropriately self-consumed; the lone American (Sean Penn) is hopelessly irresponsible, brash, superficial, cocksure and a borderline incompetent; and the innocent refugee (Davies, who is also great) is loveable, poor, misunderstood and eventually suicidal because of his adulation of a woman (Kristen Scott Thomas). The English gentleman is, of course, properly moral, quietly patrician and appropriately self-effacing when required.

Kristen Scott Thomas, Mary in "Up in the Villa," plays the part of widow beset by many urges, ghosts, a spot of rebellion, not to mention some deep-seated personal insecurities. As only she can, KST pulls together all these facets with dialogue, delicate mannerisms and her copyright look - but in the end, even the writer must have been unsure that the story was carried, because, reiterating the boorish plot out-load falls to bare discourse between a now apologetic Mary (KST), and a suddenly (again) haughty Princess. Sean Penn plays the role of the American, but he comes off more as sort of amalgam of Fonzy and a mongrel pound-puppy. The stereotype of the American seems to be aimed at portraying the Euro version of a "strong silent type," but he just comes across as an American looser - which, on second thought, may have been the director's intent all along.

You'd think after devoting a couple of hours to watching this, that the writer would reward the audience with an ending at least worthy of the actors, if not the plot. Regrettably even the ending is weak, so weak in fact that when Mary wanders off with the American, who can tell whether it's good, bad or if it even matters to them or anyone else. It amounts to sort of an "on the train" version of riding off into the sunset -- but just looks like the director finally admits to being bored with the whole affair.

If you're a Kristen Scott Thomas fan, see the film to watch a great actress at the top of her craft, otherwise your time may be better spent on other things. December 31, 2002

Sumptuous but slight

A sumptuously filmed, delightfully old-fashioned, but ultimately rather insubstantial adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novella of the same name. Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas) must decide: does she play it safe and marry a stuffy Englishman (James Fox) for position and security, or does she follow her heart and take up with a charming but feckless married American playboy (Sean Penn)? A few days of melodrama involving sex, suicide and the menace of Italian fascism help make up her mind. The performances from Scott Thomas and Penn are solid, with Anne Bancroft, Derek Jacobi and Massimo Ghini delighting in minor roles, though Jeremy Davies is less convincing as an Austrian peasant. It's probably worth seeing just for Maurizio Calvesi's cinematography and Paul Brown's production design - the lavish villa and the ripening tomatoes at the tennis club are a treat. But highest honors surely belong to special make-up artist Joan Giacomin who transforms the talented but rather rough-headed Sean Penn into a veritable `40s matinée idol. Penn continues to shine, in roles like this one, with remarkable versatility. September 5, 2002

A Mediocre Movie Grows From a Great Book

The cast in this movie is exceptional, and the book is among the author's (W. Somerset Maugham) best, but somehow something got very, very lost in the translation and the movie is merely okay. I don't know why, exactly. It's been said that Maugham is extremely difficult to translate onto the screen, and this movie is Exhibit A. My advice: buy the book and sit back for a great, luxurious read. Skip the movie. August 2, 2002

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