"The Age of Innocence" A film review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL October 16, 1993 I was out of the country when "The Age of Innocence" opened and then I got caught up in the Pride Film Festival, but luckily "Age of Innocence" earned enough rave reviews from the daily critics that it's still playing. If you walked into this film late, after the credits had been shown (which would be a real loss in this case since the title sequence is an intense visual metaphor for the entire film) and you didn't know who had made this film, you'd probably guess Merchant and Ivory, since they're about the only filmmakers who consistently turn out such stylish films from literary classics in 19th and early 20th C. settings. Just about the last person you might guess is Martin Scorcese, director of such gritty, violent works as "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," and "Raging Bull." But on second thought, this adaption of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel about the manners and mores of New York high society in the last decades of the 19th C. has a kind of seething energy and passion underneath its ever-so-controlled surface that is not out of keeping with Scorcese's other films in which passion and violence erupt outwardly. Edith Wharton came, herself, from just the Old New York upper class "Society" about which she writes with such a keen eye for detail and ironic edge to her voice. At times, especially early in the film, under the tutelege of the authorial narrative voice (spoken in voice over by Joanne Woodward) it is almost as if we are in an anthropology class being instructed about the rites and customs of an exotic tribe: the rich families of the leisured class who divide their time between New York, Newport, and, in this instance, our own St. Petersburg or some other elegant winter resort hotel. The rules that govern this society are elaborate, complex, and perhaps comprehensible only to those tutored in them from childhood. The punishment for transgressing these rules is ostracism, erasure. Forgiveness comes only if the leaders of this supremely hierarchical tribe give a sign to the others, perhaps by inviting the ostracized person to be a guest in their house. Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) and May Welland (Winona Ryder) are young people from two of this tribe's most prominent families and they understand in their bones what is expected of them--and it's what they expect of themselves, if not always what they desire. The Countess Olenska (Michelle Pffeifer), though she is May's cousin and spent her childhood in this society, has lived for years in Europe in a disastrous marriage to a dissolute nobleman whom she has now abandoned. She has returned to New York hoping to get a divorce and find people to comfort and care for her. Never having lived as an adult in this mileu, she finds it hypocritical, artificial, and superficial. She doesn't realize, at first, the efforts her family has had to make to keep her from being shunned by society for her transgression of leaving her husband, thinking about divorce, and (it is rumored) having had an affair. Newland Archer (from whose point of view the story is told) finds the Countess Olenska's streak of independence, frankness, and worldliness a breath of fresh air, in contrast to the pretty but seemingly shallow May whose depth of understanding and tenacity are hidden from Newland under her demeanor of conventionally vapid femininity. He finds himself falling passionately in love with the Countess, or Cousin Ellen, as May calls her. But Newland's job, as a lawyer about to marry into the family, is to advise her that she must not seek a divorce because the accusations the Count makes against her will destroy her. Torn between his love and desire to run away with the Countess and his duty to May, his family, his class, he pleads to have his wedding date moved up, and is chagrined but compliant when he gets that wish rather than the romantic liaison with Ellen he longs for. The Countess moves to Washington D.C. and the young married couple do the grande tour of Europe that is expected of them, yet, because the Countess is a relative in the very small world of high society, it is inevitable that she and Newland will cross paths from time to time, which only fans their smouldering desire for one another. Their desire finds expression only occasionally-- in an emotion-laden gesture, a desperate fumbling to unbutton a glove so bare hands may touch, a furtive passionate kiss. Finally, at a crisis point, though they have never consumated their love for one another, Newland realizes by deciphering the coded behavior of his tribe, that they believe he and the Countess are lovers. I won't tell you what happens; you'll want to see for yourself. But I hope I've given you some idea of what a picture of complex meanings and motives and morals Wharton and Scorcese have painted. Almost everything here that appears to be innocent is not and those who seem to have lost their innocence in one way are just as likely to be the most innocent in one another sense. The ambiguities and ironies continue until the very end which, like everything else in the film, is not what surface appearances would lead you to expect. For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1993 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author.