THE
HOUSE OF MIRTHTHE
HOUSE OF MIRTH
Go, Gillian, go! As Lily Bart, Gillian Anderson slugs her way up the status staircase onto the acting A-list as doggedly and poignantly as Edith Wharton's pluckiest doomed heroine struggles to land a husband before her flower fades. Anderson's powerhouse performance and Davies' assured, understated direction make The House of Mirth a completely satisfying literary adaptation, even without any outstanding supporting work. Michele Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis generate a lot more sparks in Scorcese's movie version of Wharton's The Age of Innocence than do Anderson and Eric Stoltz, who adequately plays the sluggish Selden, but it doesn't seem to matter much. Lily Bart is a textbook tragic heroine who stubbornly makes one wrong decision after another, until she hits bottom, and Anderson is compelling all the way down. Laura Linney is skillfully nasty as the conniving Bertha, who contrives to shut down Lily's social options as efficiently as Linney (for her work in You Can Count on Me) is likely to shut Anderson out on Oscar night. And Terry Kinney is likeable as Bertha's ineffectual cuckolded husband. The best of Anderson's supporting cast is probably Anthony LaPaglia, as the nouveau riche social climber Sim Rosedale, who courts Lily while she's in full bloom, and gently sets her aside when her reputation begins to wilt.
The story's only major weakness is the degree to which Lily's inability to reverse her social decline depends on her scruples concerning a past affair or flirtation involving her archrival Bertha and Selden, Lily's favorite suitor; we are never shown why Selden would have ever had anything to do with the scheming bitch Bertha. But such plot contrivances involving scandalous letters that are a source of much fuss and are used to generate suspense, only to be tossed into the fire at the end, are an unfortunate staple of turn-of-the-century domestic fiction--you can hardly find a Henry James or Wharton story without one--and must be taken in stride. The House of Mirth is one of the rare good movies of 2000.