the audience applauded

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I found this film on the MPLEX Chanel TV listings of Comcast Xfinity. The listing gave it just 2 of 4 stars, but as a history buff I found the description blurb compelling: "Intriguing love story, set in 1936 Shanghai, in which a disillusioned blind diplomat (Ralph Fiennes) falls for a ruined Russian royal (Natasha Richardson) working as a B-girl. Richardson's mother, Vanessa Redgrave, and aunt, Lynn Redgrave, costar."I set my DVR to record it a while back but just got around to watching it I am writing this review to protest the 2-star rating of the listing. Maybe its not 4-star, but it deserves at least 3-star. Richardson's Countess' job is more correctly labeled as a "taxi dancer" in a cabaret-bar, not a "bar girl." But in 1936 it is still a disgraceful job in the minds of her mother, aunt and sister-in-law, who live with her and are supported by her earnings, but still pretend their royal birth entitles them to a better life. This becomes significant late in the film. Fiennes' character has given up any pretense of using his reputation as a top American diplomat for the stodgy respectable company that pays his salary, and dreams of one-day owning a cabaret of his own with just the right amount of tension between internationally diverse clientèle, a select group of bouncers, the right entertainment, and the ideal elegant but sad woman to set the sexual atmosphere. He wants to live in his dream bar and shut out the messy real world outside.

"The White Countess" is a beautiful film, sumptuously shot with glorious colours evoking the grandeur of Shanghai in the 1930's. Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson play the male and female leads respectively, struggling with a sub-standard script. People have waxed lyrical about the themes of isolation that run through the rhetoric, but it's just so depressingly done, at the end of the film one doesn't actually care for the protagonists any more. Ralph Fiennes plays his blind diplomat as a buffoon, appearing drunk in almost every scene. Natasha Richardson struggles with a Russian accent and fails miserably. The only masterstroke is the casting of Vanessa and Lynne Redgrave as the mother and aunt respectively. It lends the film an authentic air of continuity. Ultimately, the film fails in its execution, it's overlong and could have done with tighter editing. It's a pity that this had to be Merchant-Ivory's swansong.

The poignancy of this movie outweighs any shortcomings in the directorial department. I found myself immersed in the milieu of 1930's ShangHai, a place and time I had only read of and subsequently wondered about.The real strength of this movie is the accessibility with which powerful emotion is portrayed. I found I had real empathy for the characters.The characters were played superbly by one of the most pedigreed casts I've seen in a while.The pace was slow, but measured and well-suited to the plot.Ralph Fiennes was a convincing lead -- the image of him reminds me of TS Eliot mixed with Rick Blaine (Casablanca).Natasha Richardson is brilliant in this role. Understated and quite believable.All in all a beautiful, other worldly movie, and not for the faint-hearted.

POSSIBLE SPOILERSLike most Merchant-Ivory films, "The White Countess" is set in an exotic location (in this case Shanghai in the mid-1930's on the verge of the Japanese invasion), and it proceeds at a leisurely pace. Again, like most Merchant-Ivory films, it has an excellent cast: Ralph Fiennes as a blind American ex-diplomat, Natasha Richardson as the title character, and Lynn Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave as members of her Russian émigré family who are ashamed of the fact that she is earning money (which they are glad enough to accept) as a "dance hall girl" and presumed prostitute. The problem here is that the leisurely pace slows to a crawl and the events leading up to the Japanese takeover are observed at a distance through the interaction of Fiennes with a Japanese diplomat/spy/advance man played by Hiroyuki Sanada. Fiennes has opened his own bar/gathering place with race track winnings and named it The White Countess after the hostess he has hired away from another establishment. Sanada's character -- Matsuda -- helps Fiennes create the political tension that he considers necessary for his place to be successful. Although they are the principals, neither Fiennes nor Richardson distinguish themselves particularly, and Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave are strictly secondary characters. Sanada is, in my opinion, the most successful actor in the entire movie. That's another way of saying that the main story is utterly unconvincing and the principal actors seem merely to have gone through the motions. Neither Fiennes nor Richardson made me care about what is happening to their characters. The Japanese enter the city, the émigrés flee to an undetermined fate. Perhaps the book was more engrossing.