A beautiful movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since I always had a weak spot for Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, I was quite eager to check it out. Eventually, it was basically yet another one of these interesting projects starring Norton which didn’t turn out to be so great after all. I mean, the whole thing definitely had some potential. Indeed, first of all, it was completely shot on location in China and I thought it was quite gorgeous to look at. Then, the directing was decent and, as usual, Edward Norton and Naomi Watts both gave some really performances. Unfortunately, even though Norton was really passionate about this tale (apparently, he had been working on it as far back as 1999), I thought it was rather underwhelming and I had a rather hard time to really care about the characters and what they were going through. In fact, the book written by W. Somerset Maugham was supposedly even bleaker than this adaptation so I wonder what Norton actually saw in this story. Anyway, to conclude, even though it was slightly disappointing, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.