A good movie

First of all, to be honest, I'm not a really a huge fan of costume-dramas. Indeed, in my opinion, the characters in such stories are in fact always shallow, annoying and rather uninteresting. However, even if I usually don’t care for the genre, I have to admit that James Ivory manages most of the time to make his characters actually quite fascinating to watch and this movie was a fine example. This time, it took place in Shanghai, just before WWII and I have always been fascinated by this rather obscure page of history. Furthermore, the directing was really good with some really nice set-dressing and I just loved the mood they managed to create. Ralph Fiennes was, as usual, really strong and even though I have before never been really impressed by Natasha Richardson, I must say that she was really convincing in this movie. In my opinion, the story was rather generic but interesting enough and above all, thanks to Ivory's expertise in this genre, it was really compelling to watch. To conclude, even if it was maybe not a masterpiece, I actually really liked the damned thing and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.