Too Good Looking...

There's a touch of bigotry within me, I hate to admit, against men who are THAT handsome and THAT highly acclaimed. I have been frankly reluctant to see Ralph Fiennes' films because (perversely) I didn't want him to be that good. But he is. He's graceful and charismatic in the extreme. His acting has an easy, natural quality, and his performance in The White Countess IS very reminiscent of James Stewart. His American accent in the film was very good, very convincing. In fact, I only heard one 'glitch' in it, when he said something like: "That, Mr. MatsuDER, is..." Heh! There are few Americans who add an 'R' to a word that ends with a vowel, when the next word begins with a vowel, and almost NO mid-westerners do. (You hear that in Boston and other places on the East Coast.) But it's minor, and slipped right by me the first couple times I saw the film. I really do like this movie a lot, it's low-key and high-quality, and manages to reach a hopeful, romantic conclusion amid all the chaos and horror and insanity of war. The casting is fabulous - Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, and Vanessa's daughter Natasha Richardson, all in one film, and even the 'bit' players were all wonderful. And little Madeleine Daly impressed me greatly as Katya. She's one talented actress, at - what - ten years old? Not much older than that, by the look of her.

Just a wonderful gem of a picture, that I enjoy watching and re-watching.