A Good Woman (2004) Starring Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Milena Vukotic, Stephen Campbell Moore, Mark Umbe, 93 minutes,
5.1/10 (57 votes)
About the Movie: Scarlett Johannson and Helen Hunt give Oscar Wilde's popular play Lady Windermere's Fan a lavish jazz-age treatment in A Good Woman. An adventuress (Hunt, As Good as It Gets) flees scandal in New York and lands in Italy, where she crosses paths with a young businessman (David Hasselhoff look-alike Mark Umbers) and his very upright young wife (Johansson, Lost in Translation). Before long, tongues are wagging about the adventuress and the businessman, possibly driving the wife to a rash act. A Good Woman retains Wilde's plot--though its 19th century moral concerns don't have the same punch in 1930s Italy--and tosses aside most of his impeccable dialogue, sprinkling his clever epigrams here and there in the otherwise undistinguished dialogue. Johansson, perhaps the most physically sensual actress since Brigitte Bardot, is miscast as the moral prig; Hunt, looking pinched and austere, is miscast as the jaded courtesan. The movie's great saving grace is Tom Wilkinson as a rich man who hopes Hunt will warm his older years. Wilkinson brings a worldly benevolence to every moment he's on screen, making the lines that weren't written by Wilde sound as crisp and wise as if they were. --Bret Fetzer
