This beautifully costumed and photographed update of the 1961 film is vibrant, honest, and wonderfully acted. Helen Mirren's performance as the aging actress is at times playful, as when she brushes off an old "friend" with a lie about having a tumor, and heart-breaking as when her eyes travel from the perfect body of her lover to her own arms and then breaks down. Unlike most Tennessee Williams' works, "Stone" relies more on silences than on dialogue. Mirren registers every step in Karen's journey from humiliated actress to grieving widow to woman in love to woman scorned. Anne Bancroft, as the Countess, is also dead-on. Her arch manipulation of Karen conceals a passionate outrage at her own poverty that pours out with devastating effect in the film's final moments. Martinez and Santoro as the two young men are also effective.
Review of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
