Based on a novel of the same name, Painted Veil is a classic themed movie about love, affair, and tragedy. But yet, it’s still beautifully charming.
Set in the 1920s the newly weds Kitty and Walter Fane would soon set off to China, as this land seethed with revolutionary movements and… cholera.
Although no one could doubt Fane’s devotion as a bacteoriologist there, viewers could soon realize that he accept the task to redeem his broken heart as well as to punish his vain reckless wife for her affair. For Kitty, as she was forced into this hasty marriage by her dominant mother, a reliable gentleman like Dr Fane was just boring. Therefore, she fell easily into the trap of a married womanizer, Charles Townsend.
But then, in Shanghai, where death seemed to linger around everywhere, Kitty surprisingly learned how selfless and caring Fane was. Her husband might look cold and ignorant while he was with her, due to his anguish to her. But later, when she decided to volunteer in a local orphanage ran by a couple of French nuns, she could start to know her husband from a different angle and learn to love him.
Their marriage finally blossomed. Once again, Kitty respected and admired her husband for his unconditional love to her when she found out that she was pregnant but she could not say who the father was. Instead of being engulfed by rage, Fane simply said that it no longer mattered, bringing Kitty to edge of her tears of affection for her husband.
Sadly, their happiness was not long lasting. Kitty was again left in devastation and grief when her husband suddenly died of cholera. She then decided to return to London. But now, she had been a mature new Kitty, Kitty who was full of love for her husband, instead of a feeling that she was being wasted and useless, when she was before dumped by Townsend.
An interesting scene was when five years later Kitty with her five year old son, Walter, who was clearly Townsend’s child by looks, unexpetedly ran into her old lover, Townsend. By then, Kitty could show that Townsend meant nothing for her now and walk gracefully with her nose in the air.
