Up at the Villa (2000)

Up at the Villa is the type of British period piece that used to get made all the time, but lost its sense of urgency and had become something of an anomaly by the year 2000. There's nothing especially unskilled about it, but the result is just ho-hum. Director Philip Haas gets off on the right foot by casting the luminous Kristin Scott Thomas as a widower in search of a suitable match, but Thomas submits a performance that's emotionally reserved and squeamish, as though she's in constant fear of being touched by something nasty. Sean Penn comes off a little better, but even playing a cocksure American, this type of material is pretty different from what usually interests him. If the project is permeated with a sense of "so what," then W. Somerset's Maugham's source material is surely somewhat to blame. Up at the Villa takes place at the cusp of World War II, and there are a few ominous hints about how the fascist movement will impact the characters. However, these never turn into anything, leaving a viewer at a loss to assign more significance to the material than a scandal/cover-up plot set against the backdrop of a wartime Italian villa. There are various melodramatic twists and turns to the narrative, but since no one stays exposed to harm for very long, it's hard to have much stake in the tepid outcomes. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide