Uma is upset: the bowl has a flaw!

At the turn of the last century, a book shook the world, a work of profound importance, full of drama and magic: James Frazier's The Golden Bough. Unfortunately, it's not related to Henry James' The Golden Bowl, a work that's just about as old but not nearly as fascinating. Now Merchant-Ivory, the perpetrators of A Room With A View, Howards End and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, bring us yet another adaptation of a work about rich people in emotional distress - from one Gilded Age to another. Who will enjoy their lush adaptation of James' book? Well, let me put it like this: The Golden Bowl is the kind of film that will appeal to people to whom this kind of film appeals.

The cast is excellent: there's Nick Nolte as aging billionaire and art collector, Kate Beckinsale as his sheltered and beloved daughter who falls in love with an impoverished Italian prince (Jeremy Northam) who is secretly still in love with a fortune seeker played by Uma Thurman. Angelica Houston hovers around the basic love quadrangle and gets to dress up as Mary, Queen of Scots. The sets - Italian castles, British mansions, the collected marvels of Europe - are fabulous, and the costumes, including Uma's peacock outfit, are simply splendid, splendid.

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Related Resources • More articles • Uma Thurman • Kate Beckinsale • British Film

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If you can't tell yet, I was less than taken with The Golden Bowl, but this might be just as much my personal shortcoming as it is the movie's. While I try hard to be interested in the personal pain and passions of these characters (and I did rather well during the first half hour of The Golden Bowl), I simply have too little patience with the fussing and huffing of the filthy rich who pride themselves on making their fortunes from the plight of immigrant workers. An artful preface to the story prepares for a violent ending that never materializes, and when it's all over you realize that the stakes have been too low all along. Uma, Nick and Kate will be just fine - if their hearts and bowls break, they'll just buy new ones.

The title-giving decorative object is laden with plenty of metaphorical significance: the golden bowl has a flaw, we learn, it is cracked, and the movie is less than subtle in driving home the point that this equals Beckinsdale's damaged marriage to Prince Amerigo. Anjelica Houston finally interferes and smashes the bowl with the offending flaw. And you see, therein lies the problem: I couldn't afford to smash a gilded crystal bowl because of an invisible crack. These characters can, but the rest of us have to live with cracked goods. If you want to escape to their world for a little while, by all means, go. But for gut-wrenching ancient intrigue and heart-stopping performances, I recommend a rental of the BBC's I, Claudius. Every episode of this classic series offers more treachery, back-stabbing, and incestuous wickedness than the overstuffed pageantry of The Golden Bowl.

 

Directed by James Ivory; written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, based on the novel by Henry James; director of photography, Tony Pierce-Roberts; edited by John David Allen; music by Richard Robbins; production designer, Andrew Sanders; produced by Ismail Merchant; released by Lions Gate Films. Running time: 130 minutes.

Cast: Nick Nolte (Adam Verver), Uma Thurman (Charlotte Stant), Anjelica Huston (Fanny), Jeremy Northam (Prince Amerigo) and Kate Beckinsale (Maggie Verver).