White Countess, The

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's a very classy, finely made film, and, as one watches it -- particularly those last sweeping scenes of political turbulence and escape -- one feels both pain at their (Merchant-Ivory) parting and grateful for what, together, they achieved.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that this oasis of romance amid the turmoil of Shanghai represents the way that Merchant and Ivory, for 40 years, saw themselves: as a sanctuary of calming, life-size taste in a movie culture grown coarse. It was often far from perfect, but I'll miss that sanctuary.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie works best as spectacle: as a piece of old-style, non-CGI, on-location epic filmmaking.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

This is Merchant-Ivory's kind of showmanship, the unflashy adult variety of movie magic that they made their hallmark.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It offers top actors in Fiennes and Richardson, plus a rare joint appearance by the sisters Redgrave.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

For gourmands who appreciate this sort of cinematic comfort food, though, The White Countess is a fitting finale for the producer.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Any resemblance between this film and "Casablanca" is purely deliberate.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Its sumptuous, stately pace will wither the patience of countless moviegoers, but the impressively acted and gorgeously exotic The White Countess improves the longer you mull its complexities.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Richardson -- acting with her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, who plays her aunt, and her aunt Lynn Redgrave, who plays her mother -- finds the story's grieving heart. Fiennes is her match in soulful artistry.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Fiennes's performance, tricky and impassioned, is the showpiece.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Following his triumphs in "The Constant Gardener" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Fiennes is superb as Todd.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The film takes a long time to unfold, and some scenes feel inert. But ultimately, the conclusion is moving and satisfying.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Fiennes and Richardson make this film work with the quiet strangeness of their performances; if they insist on their eccentricities, it's because they've paid them off and own them outright.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Combines a delayed-gratification romance and rumblings of war.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

As with so many Merchant-Ivory films, The White Countess glides along on restrained, skillful performances and tapestry-rich cinematography, but its beating heart lies deep below the surface, where only determined viewers will find it.

The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck

The director has staged the elaborate production in his usual stately but impressive manner, and the production values boast the usual Merchant/Ivory stamp of quality.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

In any case, the movie moves only when she's (Richardson) in the center of it, and her complex performance as a woman balancing her dignity with her survival instincts is one of the year's very best.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

With its tentative pace, fussy, pieced-together structure and stuffy emotional climate, The White Countess never develops any narrative stamina.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

The White Countess takes place in a fascinating time and place, rife with conflict and turmoil. But to watch Fiennes float (and Richardson trudge) through it all, absorbed in themselves and their own private misery, is to wish they'd started falling earlier, if only to knock some sense into them.

Empire Angie Errigo

Trouble is, James Ivory just doesn't do sleaze. The tawdry milieu of taxi dancers, pleasure-seekers and spies rings hollow.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Moves with the stately speed of most Merchant/Ivory productions, which is to say too damn slow, but the film is snatched from the jaws of tedium by Doyle's resplendently lush camerawork and Fiennes and Richardson's spot-on performances.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Cinematographer Christopher Doyle suffuses the film with color, fire and smoke. But the more lively his images become, the more faded the characters seem.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A watchable disappointment. Sumptuous to look at, tastefully dull, and ultimately rather silly.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

This last Merchant/Ivory film feels like a thin apparition of the team's best films -- similarly static but less substantial, less palpable, and sadly less respectable, just the vestigial remains of a better day.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

This romantic tragedy has the measured gentility of the M.I. classics, but its sheen of crass melodrama is startling, and its many metaphors run amok in a tangle.

Variety Justin Chang

This final production from the team of James Ivory and the late Ismail Merchant is itself adrift in more ways than one, with a literate but meandering script by "The Remains of the Day" novelist Kazuo Ishiguro that withholds emotional payoffs to an almost perverse degree.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

I have the greatest respect for Kazuo Ishiguro, whose wonderful novel "The Remains of the Day" became one of the best films in the Merchant-Ivory oeuvre. But the combination of his stately writing and James Ivory's stately directing, even when pepped by Christopher Doyle's fizzy cinematography, makes for fatally low-key viewing.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Ivory's last minute decision to render his hero sightless may make certain symbolic sense, but creates an even greater distance between Jackson and the woman he must inevitably come to love; their dull self-restraint makes "The Remains of the Day" look like soft-core porn.

Village Voice Ed Park

Alas, The White Countess, the final Merchant Ivory film, is something of a lacquered dud.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Despite its brilliant evocation of this great city at this most provocative time in history, the movie just gets sillier and sillier.