AN IDEAL HUSBAND Oliver Parker (1999) Inspired by Oscar Wilde's play and directed by Oliver Parker, An Ideal Husband is a romantic comedy about vulnerability. Its characters are positioned in Londonese society of the late 1800s according to their fortune, their marital status, their virtues and their vices. They must toy with the delicate balance between righteousness, love, elegance, wit and betrayal, each of which corresponds to one of the film's five main characters. Lady Chiltern (Cate Blanchett) is a righteous woman whose handsome, loving husband, Sir Robert Chiltern (Jeremy Northam) has secured a perfectly dignified living as a dedicated politician. His best friend and astute womanizer, the elegant Arthur Goring (Rupert Everett) resists the mere thought of losing his cozy bachelorhood, and is amused by the love-hate advances of Robert's witty sister (Minnie Driver). Set against the noble depiction of these characters' elegant lifestyles, Mrs. Chevely (Julianne Moore), an unexpected visitor from the characters' pasts, excercises her own virtues and vices and throws everything off kilter. As all interactants are affected by the dramatic events, the "ideal husband" remains to be defined and acknowledged. Although An Ideal Husband does entertain the viewer with its visual spectacle and its ingenious dialogues (a fact which is indebted to the play), the film is not much more than an exercise in character portrayal and fails to convincingly depict the transformations which the plot is set out to provoke.		DVD Music Books Search by keywords:
Outstanding Features: Story, Costume Design An Ideal Husband Movie Review © 1999 Cinephiles - All rights reserved.