Review of The Painted Veil (2006) by Dan Y — 30 Dec 2008

A touching and moving love story set in the 1920s.

Edward Norton is Walter Fane, a successful doctor who meets Kitty (Naomi Watts) and falls in love with her quickly. He proposes and she eventually accepts, but soon it becomes clear that she has lost interest in him due to her fickle and selfish nature. She has an affair with a married friend of Walter's and upon finding out, he makes sure life for her is as difficult as possible. He even blackmails her with a condition for a 'quiet' divorce - she must accompany him on a medical relief trip to a cholera stricken area of China. While his intentions of helping the ill are honorable, it appears he hopes his unfaithful wife catches cholera. To make matters worse, the political climate in China is deteriorating due to the rise of the Nationalists. A British relief coordinator puts it best, "If cholera doesn't kill you, the Nationalists will.".

Little by little Kitty and Walter find themselves falling in love all over again as he helps the victims of cholera and she assists the nuns in a local Catholic school. They save the town from the cholera epidemic but that's not the end of their challenge or a major one for Kitty herself. This is not just another romance movie, it's something much more.