Shortness: The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil (Warner Independent Pictures, PG-13)

What happens when you combine a cheating wife (Naomi Watts) her bland immunologist husband (Edward Norton) and a cholera epidemic in a small Chinese village? Well, madness does ensue, but, unfortunately for them, it's not the slapstick kind.

Not much really happens in this lush telling of Brits in 1920s China, but it is interesting to watch. Watts and Norton make the kind of believably mismatched couple who can only become close in an impossible situation. They risk their lives stupidly time and again in a dangerous game of one-upmanship, simultaneously punishing themselves and each other.

The fun (if you can call it that) in a film like this, is seeing who can actually make it out sane and alive. If you know your tragedies, you'll be able to spot the survivor by the half-way point. That won't, however, take anything away from the experience.