The great British filmmaker Terence Davies adapts Edith Wharton's American classic, The House of Mirth, and the sensibilities of author and filmmaker mesh unexpectedly, producing a film of uncommon delicacy. Simulating the traditional costume drama as it has been codified by such directors as James Ivory, Davies actually works against the most entrenched conventions of the genre by countering naturalism with artifice. This review of Davies's film examines the aesthetic strategies of this extraordinary adaptation, and places the film in the context of Davies's work and contemporary art cinema more generally.
Susan Hayward, French Costume Drama of the 1950s, Fashioning Politics in Film