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As a form of punishment, he takes her into a remote, cholera-stricken province where she experiences redemption and comes to love her husband. The novel was inspired by an incident in Dante's 'Purgatorio' which Maugham had read as a medical student in the late 19th century, and much influenced by his terminally troubled marriage.
This version is tougher than the previous ones and convincingly in period. The three principal actors (two Americans and an Australian) affect acceptable British accents, and there are admirable performances from Diana Rigg as the acerbic mother superior of an orphanage for Chinese children and Toby Jones as dodgy colonial official. The film is inevitably more critical of Europeans in Asia than is the novel and, for no good reason, Kitty's child has been changed from a daughter to a son, but Ron Nyswaner has generally made a decent adaptation.
I admire Alexandre Desplat greatly but found his score here a trifle excessive. On the other hand, I can't praise too highly the cinematography by New Zealander Stuart Dryburgh, whose interiors, shot in a Beijing studio, are as beautifully lit as the paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby.
