Up at the Villa (2000)

Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The Maugham novel would have been a treat this movie is not.The evil fascists are interrupting the beautiful life of ex-pats living in 1937 Florence. These beautiful rich people include Kirstin Thomas (the scenery and costumes are beautiful---but that is all that is good about this movie.) It is basically a chick flick with Thomas swirling around everywhere things appearing magically at the right time to this wide eyed heroine. Kirsten has it all: looks experience 1 night stands with hitchhikers fleeing the Nazi's a powerful suitor and hot lover and so forth as she outsmarts the cartoon like Italian officials. No this is more than a brain dead caricature of pre WWII politics--it is brain dead period.I grew to hate Kirstin's character that wide eyed not a mean bone in my body look the only look she has frozen in place during the whole movie as she picks up and screws a hitchhiker in the most beautiful as is possible Florentine villa. Belinda and Philip Hass (writer and director) also made Angels and Insects a movie that troubles my subconscious even today. That is a whole different matter though or is it??.... in it there was too bright of lighting dresses made to look like insects---weird and troubling. It is however the perfect female heroes that are the problem in both films= they are sickeningly PC perfect.This is Maugham stripped of all of his sophisticated observations and insights and filled with chick flick PC action.Thumbs down down down....

I read this short novel in a couple of days and it was such a treat. I like to watch films after I read the books but when I saw Sean Penn and Kristin Scott Thomas I thought to myself... who did the casting for this film! What RIDICULOUS choices. This film could have been a hit had they chose appropriate actors. First of all, Mary is supposed to be 30, yet still incredibly beautiful with cinnamon colored skin and light golden brown hair, which I believe was supposed to be long and gorgeous. Her body was supposed to still show her youth (not the unfortunate anorexic appearance of Kristin Scott Thomas). And Sean Penn could never have been Rowley... he was supposed to be younger than Mary and not be particularly attractive (I think S.P. is downright vulgar looking), but still incredibly magnetic (which S.P. lacks). A better fit would have been Ryan Gosling.What a shame and waste of money to make a film that doesn't even fit the books character depictions!

I watched this movie last night, on pay-per-view. It is boring, pointless. Yet it´s got a beautiful art direction, very well executed in all, but just drags on at times.The book by W. Somerset Maugham is not great, the movie could not be either.But what caught my attention the most was the "professionalism" of Sean Penn. Being a huge fan of him, and having read loads of his independent-minded, bold-against-the-system interviews, it is kind of comforting to see him work plainly for the money, or as someone said earlier, acting as a big dude. You come to the conclusion that "Well, even the just and mighty have to put bread on the table".Still I voted it 6, as being worth the watch. But not renting or paying for it like I did... wait till TNT features it for free and with lots of commercials, so you can zap around for something better!!!

I'm intrigued by the comment below about how rich Maugham's story is - because I quite like Maugham. I also like Anne Bancroft, Kristen Scott-Thomas and James Fox, so selecting this movie from my video rental store was easy. Unfortunately, something must have happened in writing the screenplay. *** SPOILERS ***One of the more selfless and realistically portrayed acts of love I've ever seen takes place toward the end of this movie. James Fox's character reveals how very difficult and long a climb it has been to now be about to be appointed Governor of Bengal, one of the largest of India's states. With his sigh, his body movement, we sense the dedication, the diligence, the very effort it has taken to climb the "greasy pole". Fox is not a peer - we sense no great hereditary estate. He has been knighted for his painstaking work and is apparently wealthy through his very industry.Fox is promptly informed by a poor widow to whom he has proposed, that during the very weekend she was to consider his proposal: a) her view of charity was to sleep with a refugee ("I thought I'd do him good -he was just so miserable" is the amazing explanation), b) the refugee proceeded to kill himself with the gun Fox had lent her for protection, c) the widow arranged to hide the body in the woods with the assistance of a cad who despises Fox, d) Fox's gun and the cad were held by the police, but e) the widow managed to retrieve his gun and the cad by rifling through her friend's desk for material to blackmail the authorities. She tells Fox that she can understand if he would like to withdraw his proposal. Fox's reaction? Not only does he remain keen on marriage with her, but he would freely give up his career in doing so because he loves more than life, and the scandal (if revealed while he were Governor) of his wife's witless fornication causing a stranger's suicide would make the British government's task in India more difficult. To Fox's astonishing act of love, forgiveness and self-abnegation, the widow says she has never loved Fox, that his attitude is "weak" because they "need him in India" (one suspects she simply wishes to be the Governor's wife at that moment), that he misunderstands the cad who would never breathe a word of the scandal, and that she turns down his marriage proposal because the scandal has caused her somehow to become a woman of the world, rather than the child ("you're used to giving me sweets") who wanted to marry him. However, as the widow, Scott-Thomas had seemed anything but a child. She had spoken before about the horror of marriage to one without virtue - about the twelve year long marriage she had endured in which her husband had gambled and drunk away their money, whored his way through countless women, and finally been killed while speeding. She had spoken of her dread of continuing to live on the generosity of strangers. These aren't a child's sentiments but an adult's sagacity.To whom then does Scott-Thomas turn after the selflessness of Fox's love? To whom does she turn to avoid the insecurity of which she spoke as the bane of her previous marriage? To a married man who says he can offer "no guarantees" of his love or faithfulness except that he will not return to his wife, who asks her to simply take the train to "anywhere", and about whom we know only that he takes waitresses and servants frequently to bed, is disliked by the authorities, and assisted her to deceive the authorities to help her.At the end, she says to the cad, "I was yours when you first sat down". Well, welcome to misery. Sorry, I know it's the movies, but when a movie ends this badly, with the heroine choosing the charmless married void in lieu of the paragon of sacrificial love, security and virtue, I have a difficult time liking the movie. I found Sean Penn's character anything but likeable - he had a sort of neutered quality - making puerile fraternity boy jokes about sleeping with the 60+ old princess, asking "why" of a government official's decision in a crowded antechamber and shrugging weakly before sitting down (when asked if satisfied with the official's bogus explanation). I suspect the movie has taken the story's tragic ending and tried to torture it into a happy one. The same woman who presumably acted on impulse by marrying a weak man and suffered a disastrous marriage for it,the same woman who acted on impulse to seduce a poor refugee and thereby set in train the events that killed him, is indeed the woman who turns away from a man willing to throw away everything for which he worked out of love for her, for a man who says "hey, no guarantees, babe". Tragedy will undoubtedly again ensue - the little painted grin painted on the protagonist as she heads toward the bar car, can't mask it. *** SPOILERS END ***I disliked the movie.