Aside from all those Merchant Ivory wallpaper pictures, no contemporary movie seems so entirely British, in the best sense of the term, as the new release "Easy Virtue." A remake of a very different 1927 Alfred Hitchcock silent flick, based on a Noel Coward play, it features an accomplished cast of mostly English actors; in addition, it comes from Ealing Studios, one of the brightest spots in the uneven history of English film and the source of so many memorable comedies in the 1940's and 50's.

Set in 1929, the picture reflects much of its original temporal and dramatic context, with the upper-class characters, the elegant surroundings, the general air of sophistication typical of a Noel Coward comedy. The dialogue often sparkles with the Coward wit, the distinctive rapid repartee of exchanges between people who lounge around in grand houses with posh drawing rooms, conservatories, and libraries, cleverly insulting each other while the butler serves sherry. At the same time, in its use of a constantly moving camera, quick cuts, frequent exterior shots, and its panoramas of splendid country homes and rolling greensward, it seldom resembles the usual filmed play.

Following a long tradition, the movie revolves around the familiar comic concept of misalliance, an apparent mismatch of lovers or spouses. In this case the situation also recalls scores of books and movies about the encounter between Americans and Britons, which creates one of the several reasons for the particular mismatch in "Easy Virtue." John Whitaker (Ben Barnes) the young scion of aristocratic country folks, brings his new bride, Larita (Jessica Biel), whom he has married suddenly, home to his family. A race car driver, somewhat older and more experienced than her husband, with a dark past that emerges later, and an American, Larita immediately provokes the hostility of her snooty and ultimately vicious mother-in-law, Veronica (Kristin Scott Thomas), and her two drippy daughters, which creates all the conflicts of the film.

Independent and outspoken, the lively Larita represents an unwelcome element of change in the smug, stuffy traditionalism of the Whitakers. She treats the servants without condescension, advises her young sisters-in-law in matters of the heart, and attempts to please her mother-in-law, all of which goes drastically, sometimes comically, wrong. She inadvertently embarrasses the younger daughter in a theatrical performance, shocks her mother-in-law when a shooting party stumbles upon her and her husband making love, and worst of all, fatally sits on Veronica's annoying Chihuahua, resulting in a farcical surreptitious burial, a solemn memorial service, and a disastrous accidental exhumation.

Fed up with the family and even with her twit of a husband, Larita attempts to introduce her brand of modernism and the machine age to a group of people clinging to the past. She brings a shocking Cubist portrait by Picasso into a house full of dim 19th century paintings of dogs, horses, and hollyhocks. She plays her portable phonograph, drives her magnificent silver bullet of a car down the country roads, and helps her father-in-law, her only friend, repair his motorcycle, consequently learning the reasons for his sardonic alienation from the rest of the Whitakers.

In dozens of details, Easy Virtue beautifully captures the surfaces of a special time, emphasized by the director's habit of shooting reflections in mirrors, windows, eyeglasses, and silverware. The constant allusions to famous people and events of the 1920's, the clothing and hairstyles, the Cole Porter songs, even the sorrowful memories of the Great War all contribute to its atmosphere and meaning. One grand panorama of the fox hunt, Oscar Wilde's unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable, and Larita's method of joining it, nicely summarizes the lovely ambiguity of that particular time and place, as well as the conflict of values that energizes the picture.

Finally, the solution to the dreadful dilemmas of the marriage, the family, the whole problem of misalliance, brilliantly and appropriately violates all the traditions of comedy, that most rigid of traditional genres. The right people finally do join together in a union that should shock but actually seems exactly right, a witty way to end a clever, crafted work, worthy of both Coward and Hitchcock.

Easy Virtue

(PG-13), directed by Stephan Elliott

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