A Good Woman (2004)

While retaining her secret identity, the illustrious Mrs. Erlynne saves Lady Windemere from making a grand social faux-pas with the scoundrelly Lord Darlington.

This Oscar Wilde adaptation is nice to look at with its Italian surroundings and neatly costumed stars, but it fully misses the original's excitement and wit; instead, the audience is showered with a cascade of the author's aphorisms (and not just from the play, but from all other sources as well).

Maltin**: "Ill-conceived version..." 

First Lines: Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

Vignettes #28

I guess it happens to everyone once in a while that you're told you look like someone else. Over time my 'lookalikes' have been Oscar Wilde, Woody Allen, James Spader, Elvis Costello and even that mad drunken outsider locally known as the 'punker Mike'.

The most persistent comparison, however, was that to Woody Allen. It lasted for several years, and I was getting it even from close friends and, most depressingly, from my own mother! It's not that I don't like Woody Allen, but it is something else to be compared with him barely on looks.

In 1992 Ursula and I visited New York City, and even there I was approached by people on a daily basis thinking I was the guy. On one occasion we were both sitting on a bench in Central Park taking a rest and a young businessman walked by telling us: "He, you two look just like Woody and Mia!"

One day we were stuck in a traffic jam with our rented car on the West Side highway. For about 15 minutes traffic came to a complete halt, and next to us was a car with 2 young African-American couples inside. All of a sudden one of the women started screaming: "Oh, look, it's Woody Allen!" They started shouting over to our car, but I gently signaled to them that I'm not the man. I must have shown the wrong reaction, since that made them even more convinced and the two women didn't stop screaming: "It's really him, it's really him!"

Luckily I have grown out of that lookalike phase of my life, but I'm sure those women are still telling their kids and grandkids about that one time they actually met Woody Allen.