I enjoyed Easy Virtue, but I know in my heart that I wouldn't even entertain the notion of making time to watch it a second time if not for Colin Firth. The same A Single Man star who in recent days has been buzzed as an Oscar contender can be counted on to make anything delightful for a short time, no matter how frothy or otherwise dull. He helped me make it all the way through What a Girl Wants. Twice, I'll admit.
Weinstein better deliver a nomination for this guy on Single Man
Easy Virtue is about English society heir John Whitaker (Ben Barnes) bringing a feminist, independent wife named Larita (Jessica Biel) home to meet his parents (Firth and Kristen Scott-Thomas). Noel Coward's sociological comedy is rather enjoyable as it lives on the printed page, but it is much more fun in filmed form thanks to the talents of Firth and the always sublime Scott-Thomas. Barnes and Biel do good work in the parts they're given. Of the two of them, Biel outperformed my expectations most.
Three marvels: Kimberley Nixon, Kristen Scott-Thomas, and Katherine Parkinson
If there's one most unsung performance from what I've read by others, it's that of the absolutely marvelous Katherine Parkinson as John's sister Marion, who's infatuated with an imaginary fiance. Parkinson is one of the stars of my beloved The I.T. Crowd that plays on Britain's Channel 4 and is most easily found on DVD or Netflix Watch Instantly in the USA.
I can't forget to mention Kris Marshall as well, who plays servant Furber. American audiences no doubt know him best as "Colin With a Big Knob" from Love Actually. Of course, the late Saturday night PBS-watching crowd might know him from the will-it-never-end sitcom My Family. Avid anglophile Americans may even know him as Pasha/Strelnikov from the '02 Zhivago miniseries. Here he finally gets a chance to do understated comedy with marvelous tools like subtlety and wit, which mass-market productions don't let him near because they like how his eyes bug out.
Extras on the Blu-ray of Virtue include a Feature Commentary with director Stephan Elliott and writer Sheridan Jones, Deleted Scenes [4:48], a Blooper Reel [8:47], and a featurette on the NY Premiere [6:09]. The excised scenes, as is often the case, are better left on the cutting room floor and DVDs. The bloopers include on particularly hilarious send-up that I will not spoil here. The featurette gets things over and done with quickly, and I haven't had the time to listen to the commentary but I'm sure it's as good as most tracks of europeans talking over comedies of their own creation. The movie's good, the extras are worth the time, and to top it all off, you get to see a scene in which Firth dances a mean tango.