This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

After watching "Maid of Manhattan" recently with Natasha Richardson(RIP) and Ralph Fiennes, I decided to give this film a go. I thought the film was so so good. However I don't understand why Fiennes had to put an American accent onto this because he can't do a Amercian accent!! I always thought as the blind English Diplomat not American at all! They either should've got someone better or written the character off if they weren't going to get the character development right among the actors! Anyways moving in, I loved how himself and Richardson's relationship developed throughout the whole film. The story- line was sad because it was set in near World War 2 and the fact people running for their lives to Japan (I think)in order to be safe from the soldiers. Omg one scene that even more frightened me as well was, when Fiennes character met with the soldiers face to face. I really thought they were gonna shot him right on the spot but thank god, he made it out alive and let him go without hesitant!I really liked this film, it really shows the history of China and it had a good cast to entertain us with their fine acting. I give this movie 8/10!

With an international cast and much of the movie actually set on location, "The White Countess" seems to have most of the design needed to bring out pre-WWII era China, but the director, Ivory, may be a bit too ambitious. The sets and styles seem often too set-like for their own good, and draw attention to themselves - extras seemed like extras, costumes like costumes, explosions more like fireworks and so on and so forth. Understandably the main character Jackson's in sort of a malaise, but the movie plods along despite it's in your face character development. There seemed to be little chemistry between actors Fiennes and Richardson as well. The acting and dialog is well enough though - the movie needs a little more going for it than bar-scene after bar-scene and murky political dialog. It's a near miss for me.

This is one of the very few films i have ever seen in my life where i was forced to give up, concede how bored i was, and just TURN IT OFF. The opening credits are beautifully tantalising and gave me much hope but that was cut short pretty quickly. The Redgraves as Russians are laughable, the story is ultimately banal and the writing is lacklustre. The Remains of The Day was an exceptional film but this is just trying too hard to be something it hasn't a hope in hell of achieving. Ralph Fiennes is dreadful and both Fiennes & Richardson are equally unattractive in their conventionality. Yeuch. The film desperately wants to be Casablanca or something with deep poetry in its veins and fails miserably. Really awful.

"The White Countess" is a beautiful film, sumptuously shot with glorious colours evoking the grandeur of Shanghai in the 1930's. Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson play the male and female leads respectively, struggling with a sub-standard script. People have waxed lyrical about the themes of isolation that run through the rhetoric, but it's just so depressingly done, at the end of the film one doesn't actually care for the protagonists any more. Ralph Fiennes plays his blind diplomat as a buffoon, appearing drunk in almost every scene. Natasha Richardson struggles with a Russian accent and fails miserably. The only masterstroke is the casting of Vanessa and Lynne Redgrave as the mother and aunt respectively. It lends the film an authentic air of continuity. Ultimately, the film fails in its execution, it's overlong and could have done with tighter editing. It's a pity that this had to be Merchant-Ivory's swansong.