Curran Lifts The Veil On China
The Age
Friday April 25, 2008
Watts rises in the East for skilled director, writes Craig Mathieson.
TWO people in a room, arguing when they need to communicate. That is the unflinching core of each of director John Curran's three feature films, be it the torpid Brisbane grunge of 1998's Praise, the withering infidelities of 2004's We Don't Live Here Anymore, and now the 1920s Chinese period piece The Painted Veil. Curran's protagonists fight for their lives, using words as weapons and the unspoken truth as a battering ram - invariably he finds the intimate, incendiary heart of the matter."All three films are to some degree about people trying to achieve some sort of grace and falling short. I don't know what that says about me, but the drama of my own life has always been in the relationships, never car racing or dealing with gangsters," notes Curran, speaking from his home in the upstate New York town of Pittsford."To my detriment, I'm drawn to character-driven material. I read what I know will be commercial zingers and I just don't feel drawn to them," he says. "I'm attracted to a script where there's a friction and dynamic between the characters that I can work with."Curran, who spent most of the '90s working and developing short films in Australia before the international recognition for Praise took him back to America, was the final piece of the puzzle required to get The Painted Veil made. Actor Edward Norton had spent six years working on the screenplay with writer Ron Nyswaner, while Naomi Watts had given her commitment to Norton to co-star four years ago. It was the latter, who had worked with Curran on We Don't Live Here Anymore, who put his name forth. The gifted, if demanding, Norton promptly called him."He's incredible, engaged and passionate and really smart," the director says of his leading man. "It's daunting, because he has a body of work that's impressive and he knows the material back and forth and what he wants to do with it. His sell to me was, on a very basic level, that we won't get a chance to make a film like this, on this scale, ever again. It's getting harder and harder to finance these films, and it's getting harder and harder to find unspoilt locations in China. Everything is getting developed."Based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel, The Painted Veil is about the troubled marriage of English doctor Walter Fane (Norton) and his indolent, well-to-do wife Kitty (Watts). A union founded on Walter's love and Kitty's desire to spite her mother invariably founders in post-WWI China, where Kitty's affair with a married diplomat (Liev Schreiber, Watts' real-life partner) in colonial Shanghai leads to her husband censuring her by taking her inland with him to fight a cholera epidemic. It is a punishment of zealous vindictiveness, expertly captured by Curran."It's pretty easy directing talent," concedes Curran. "I don't have to give them lessons in acting, just create an environment where they could do their stuff. I'd worked with Naomi before, and knew what she needed, and Edward is like me. He's keen on going down a line, but then getting options on film for the editing room so you're covered six months later."The Painted Veil, which was previously adapted in 1934 with Greta Garbo starring, is a reminder that when it comes to emotional torment, few contemporary actors can convey suffering like Watts. Pain plays across her face to expressive ends, with Curran comparing her to her predecessor in the role."Naomi's a great silent screen actress. There's so much she can do without words and she's very good at knowing what she can play and what she has to say," explains Curran. "Her script notes are invariably about her taking stuff out - she'll tell you, 'I don't have to say it, I can show that'. And she does."While the 1934 version was shot on Hollywood soundstages, Norton, Watts and finally Curran were all intent on shooting their take in China. To help ensure this, the film was set up as a co-production with China's official film board, giving the state input into the creative process. The China seen in the film is on the edge of upheaval, with explicit anti-foreigner sentiment mixing with nationalism."It was a real struggle, but we won a lot. The film's not compromised at all - it was always going to be a PG-13 film, we never shot visceral, bloody battle scenes or graphic sex," Curran says. "It was like dealing with a tourist board - they wanted to present their country in a good light. They were mainly concerned with showing peasants massing and protesting, which made crowd scenes very difficult."While the pollution in Beijing, where initial studio scenes were shot, and the chaotic, overstaffed nature of Chinese sets provided initial difficulties, once the company got on location in the Guangxi province in China's south, the struggle proved worthwhile."In every sense, it was a great adventure," says Curran.He is uncertain what he'll do next. He's adapting Jim Thompson's lean noir novel, The Killer Inside Me, but admits that for all the good feedback he gets, financial backers are not queueing up.Whatever eventuates, he's fairly certain it will involve two people in a room; though perhaps no longer arguing."You spend a lot of years struggling and obsessing with relationships, but as you get older things just happened naturally: your vices drop away, your values change. You're softened and, hopefully, a little wiser," Curran concludes.
© 2008 The Age