It's always a pleasure to just sit and watch Michelle Pfeiffer glide across the screen and she looks delightful in these early Twentieth
century costumes with many gardens filled with blooms as her
background. It is even better to watch her when she has a good role to
play and plays across strong actors which she has neither in this film.

For a movie that has/shows a lot of sex this is a pretty sexless movie mainly due to Pfeiffer's co-star, Rupert Friend, who is too fey to convince as her lover. It's
not that she plays a woman 50 years old to his man/child of 19 but that
it seems as anincestuous relationship because her loving him doesn't
make sense. His cheekbones compete with hers as does he beauty whereas
someone more masculine, stronger, wouldhave made the movie more believable.

Kathy
Bates, a strong actress in her own right, and all dressed and dolled
up, is fine in her role but the writer misses a lot of chances, and
laughs, not to mention fireworks, in her scenes with Pfeiffer and other courtesans, which the majority of women in this picture are and they certainly do well in their business.

The
houses, the servants they have,  the gardens, the clothes, not to
mention the hotels and restaurants, are top grade and make for opulant
scenes on the screen.

The director, Stephen Frears, obviously loves Pfeiffer's face and body, which the camera lingers over from all angles in all
places from the bed to the garden, and, also that of Friend's whose
bare buttocks are constantly exposed.

There is much to be admired in this film, to once again mention Pfeiffer, that it is too bad the movie is slow and the 'drama' doesn't pay off but it is the miscasting of the male lead that sinks the film.