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W. Somerset Maugham’s pleasant, unpretentiously minor novel of the 1930s British stage, Theatre, has been transformed into an overwrought, extravagantly produced costume drama, with Annette Bening miscast in the title role. Hungarian filmmaker István Szabó and screenwriter Ronald Harwood can’t decide whether their film is a screwball comedy about the backstabbing vanity of actors (à la the Carole Lombard–starring Twentieth Century and To Be or Not To Be) or a touching, tender melodrama (a Bette Davis vehicle, perhaps) about a splendid actress losing herself as she fades into her 40s. The tone keeps shifting, and Bening can’t keep up, especially where she’s required to be brittle and funny. The story has London leading lady Julia Lambert, who’s been married forever to the handsome but passionless Michael (Jeremy Irons), falling hard, against her better judgment, for a young American who has little interest in serious romance. The distraught Julia plots revenge against this womanizer, and that sets up a hideous last act in which her devious, neurotic one-upmanship is cheered on by the manipulative filmmakers like Republican delegates stomping for George W. (105 minutes)
BY GERALD PEARY
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