Saw "House of Mirth" at the Detroit Film Theatre tonight. Well worth seeing for a dissection of manners and morals of the upper crust in turn-of-the-century New York City. Gillian Anderson (X-Files) was quite good as Lily Bart, the main character whose refusal to play the game expected of her led to her downfall at the hands of several nasty high society characters. The movie was based on Edith Wharton's semi-autobiographical novel. Dan Ackroyd played one of the worst villans in the story. I found him a bit hard to swallow because of his previous comedy roles, perhaps not because of any deficiency in his acting. Laura Linney was quite good as another of the tale's baddies.
The movie was filmed in Glasgow, not New York, and directed by Brit, Terence Davies. The program note compared "House of Mirth" to Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence." Scorsese was "fascinated by the ways people used beautiful manners as lethal weapons. He considered them far more ruthless that the mafiosi he usually filmed."
