I Watch Films: An Ideal Husband

 

An Ideal Husband (1999)

It’s the 1890s; Sir Robert (Jeremy Northam) and Lady Gertrude Chiltern (Cate Blanchett) are the perfect couple, with Sir Robert an up-and-coming MP. Lady Markby, seeking to stir up trouble, arranges for Mrs Laura Cheveley (Julianne Moore) an old schoolmate of Lady Gertrude, to come to the Chiltern’s ball. It turns out she intends to blackmail Robert. She has letters from many years ago at the start of his political career in which it’s revealed he used insider knowledge to make a fortune, which made him the respectable man he is today. He’s currently making a report into a canal scheme which is clearly a scam, and she wants him to declare it’s good.

Also at the party is Lord Arthur Goring (Rupert Everett) a rakish bachelor (whose father wishes him to marry and continue the family). Laura was previously engaged to him and wants to restart their romance, but Arthur is not very keen, noting that she left him for the (rich, older) Baron who she is a widow of. Also, also at the party is Mabel Chiltern (Minnie Driver), Robert’s sister who is mostly there to make witty remarks about the men who keep proposing to her, and to lay out a bit of the story. Gertrude is surprised when Laura lets slip that she expects Robert to change his report to say the scheme is good. When she confronts him he writes Laura a letter that he will make the true report.

Robert reveals the blackmail attempt to Arthur who encourages him to tell Gertrude. However Gertrude is the most upstanding woman imaginable and Robert wants Arthur to soften it for him. However Lady Markby had brought Laura to tea with Gertrude. Gertrude tells Laura she has nothing but contempt for her, and does not care to associate with dishonest people. Laura reveals Robert’s indiscretions in the blackmail scheme. Robert, arriving, tells Laura to leave. Gertrude tells him he must resign; Robert tells her that no one could be the ideal that she imagines.

Gertrude sends a note to Arthur, saying she will come to him for help. While waiting for her Robert arrives, also asking for Arthur’s help. Arthur’s butler, mistaking the instructions, lets in Laura, also here to see Arthur, and turns away Gertrude. Robert is furious, thinks they are in league. Trying to salvage something, Arthur attempts to seduce Laura, asking for the letters as a sign of good faith. They instead make a wager; if Robert condemns the scheme in Parliament she will give him the letter; if he endorses it to save his reputation Arthur will marry Laura.

Robert does indeed condemn the scheme and Laura hands over the letter, but informs Arthur that she has vindictively stolen the note Gertrude sent Arthur (which reads slightly compromisingly) and will send it to Robert. This leads to a complex and farcical ending in which everyone apologises, makes small lies and excuses for each other, Robert and Gertrude are reconciled (with slightly less idealised images of each other) and Mabel, who has been caught up on the edges of all this, gets engaged to Arthur who she thinks will make an ideal husband, some confessions being needed to get Robert’s consent.

This adaption of the Oscar Wilde play is fun, the best being when the actors really get into being a bit sarcastic or down right mean about each other (and themselves). At one point they’re at the theatre, watching The Importance Of Being Earnest* for a bit of meta-humour. If the seriousness of the situation is sometimes undercut, that’s surely because the comedy is better. The use of lavish locations is nice but adds little; it might as easily have taken the play’s four scenes as a model.

Watch This: Glorious and funny adaption of a classic play
Don’t Watch This: Silly and slight with a trite moral

* An Ideal Husband opened in February 1895; The Importance Of Being Earnest in January 1895; this is not in any way a problem for the film.