Easy Virtue

Easy Virtue will be reminiscent to audiences familiar with upstairs-downstairs English drawing room style comedy because it is itself part of the template of such scenarios that are so popular with modern audiences. Noel Coward wrote Easy Virtue as a play in the mid-20s. It was made as a silent film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1928 and although I haven't seen that I would out of curiosity. The curiosity factor lessens with the current version, not because it lacks quality which it has overflowing, but because of the repeat effect.
Prodigal son (Ben Barnes, a bland male ingenue) John Whittaker returns home to his English family estate. Kristen Scott Thomas dotes as the mother while Colin Firth essays the detached father with ease. Two younger daughters make snide remarks and the whole tone is arch and funny, with one valet in particular saying a couple of great zingers. John has married an American race car driver (Jessica Biel) and the family, save the father, is simply aghast.
Scott Thomas could never be accused of overacting but she comes close here. Biel sings and acts with conviction making one wish the director gave us more insight during the film's few intimate scenes. There's a plot point involving a pet chihuahua that just doesn't work in the film, and certainly it's been seen more than once anyway.
Production values are top notch but sometimes helmer Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is his best known film but his couple of other movies were hardly distributed in America.) throws in arty shots like an overhead view that doesn't really enhance the story so much as call attention to itself.
Easy Virtue will satisfy a sophisticated audience. That's not its problem though. The fact remains that Easy Virtue blends into so many other films just like it that people will be hard pressed to call it a favorite.