Movies on the edge

By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 2, 2000

UP AT THE VILLA (PG-13) (115 min.) -- As an actor, Sean Penn can successfully convey many traits, but propriety isn't one of them. Penn is terribly miscast as a suave American playboy in pre-World War II Italy, his familiar rough edges muted by the era's etiquette.

His role as Rowley Flint -- a name tougher than the character -- makes Penn constantly appear uncomfortable. Rowley is everything Penn doesn't care to be in his familiar public life: dapper, deferential to others' wishes. And he enunciates.

The role is a stretch, and actors should always be commended for doing that. Even when it fails to impress.

This softness doesn't even suit his character, who should be a stronger contrast with upper-crust English living in denial of Fascist rumblings around them. War can't possibly crash their party, can it? Not in this movie, but any action would improve prim melodrama depending on people doing the least likely things.

Most puzzling with her behavior is Mary Panton (Kristin Scott-Thomas), a British visitor and possibly the future wife of wealthy diplomat Sir Edgar Swift (James Fox). She has three days to decide if she will marry him while he attends to business elsewhere.

Women of the day usually leaped at such chances, but not Mary, and not because of any noble sense of independence. The script by Belinda Haas, based on a W. Somerset Maugham novella, simply has more illogical things for her to do.

Mary and Rowley meet at a dinner party hosted by Princess San Fernandino (Anne Bancroft, fine as ever). Rowley is attracted to Mary, but she rudely resists. Instead, she beds Karl (Jeremy Davies), a grimy Austrian refugee, out of pity for his poverty.

Karl takes that night of affection seriously, killing himself when Mary refuses his later advances. Frightened by the potential scandal, Mary enlists Rowley to dispose of the body and concoct an alibi as gossip and Fascist oppression closes in.

Scott-Thomas has an affinity with these repressed roles, so much that she approaches type-casting. The chill of her role and Penn's inability to locate some heat under his tuxedo makes them a bland duo. Mary actually would seem better off with Edgar, a conclusion diluting any romantic tension. Up at the Villa looks great under Philip Haas' direction but plays flat as a crumpet.