The seductive wit and razor sharp rhetoric of punctilious poet Oscar Wilde's distinct brand of word-slinging is treated to another faithful screen interpretation in the ritzy and sardonically enchanting A Good Woman, adapted from Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan.  All the familiar Wilde hotspots are here: steamy affairs, sordid love triangles, mordant chatter and the odd spot of familial sex scandal thrown in for good measure. 

At his nimblest the film's director Mike Barker (Best Laid Plans) rolls through his scenery with breakneck haste, chopping from location to location as if his pants were on fire and configuring a rollicking pace that keeps his histrionic proceedings fresh and jaunty.

Where else other than in an Oscar Wilde production can you encounter such a delightful array of marvellous one liners delivered with rapid fire continuity?  The snap crackle of Wilde's prose, whether on paper, stage or screen, can be wonderfully infectious and here Barker successfully taps a goldmine of quips and conversation.  How about some of these fine examples of one-line wonders: "every man is born truthful and every man dies a liar;" "(the only thing) worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all;" or "you're so in love with gossip you don't let truth put its pants on."  Even better is one gentleman's comparison of sausages and women: "if you want to enjoy the process don't watch the preparation of either."

The "good woman" of the film's title is the recently married Lady Windermere (Scarlett Johansson), a kind and pure soul who, surrounded by Wilde's scandalous network of antagonists, will soon be confronted by the brashness and questionable ethics of her peers.  When serial gold digger seductress Mrs Erlynne (Helen Hunt) totters into town -- the remade location is the Amalfi Coast of Italy -- whispers on the gossip circuit link her to Mr Windermere (Mark Umbers) and the community is soon smitten with speculation.  Slippery bachelor Lord Darlington (Stephen Campbell Moore) uses the opportunity to provide Lady Windermere with a shoulder to cry on, hoping to seduce her fragile mentality.  Meanwhile the self-deprecating charisma of Tuppy (Tom Wilkinson) provides his cagey associates with refreshing earnestness: he understands precisely the kind of woman Mrs Erlynne is and regardless longs to slip a ring onto her finger and whisk her down the aisle.

Each cast member gets noticeable kicks out of the brevity of the material and lap-up their portions of the frame with zeal: Wilkinson is especially charming as the wise and winsome Tuppy; Moore is entertainingly oily as Darlington, a wolf in sheep's skin; and Johansson, whose softly radiant features seem naturally reminiscent of Hollywood's bygone fondness for vaseline tinted lenses, beams in the title role, commandeering an attractive kind of thoughtfulness and restrain.

A Good Woman's screenplay, the first fully fleshed script from Howard Himelstein, retains Wilde's fondness for glorious snide and cunning, laced indelibly with a mordant sharpness and humour.  Also retained is Wilde's dexterity in off-setting the naughtiness of his vernacular with genuine and affecting measures of pathos, commingling meaning and commentary in whimsicality and vice versa.

Barker's control of his narrative is circular and reflexive and happy treads over itself to scrounge greater details of plot conflicts and the intersecting concerns of its character's affairs and agendas.  Wilde was such an audacious and distinct writer that the film, gleaming with a sound grasp on the ideals and nuances of its source, still feels like it's very much his show, and it is to Barker's credit that the spotlight shines on the right places.

The cast and crew of A Good Woman whistle along to the playful and puckish qualities of Wilde's wonderful word-slinging, and this uniformed interpretation is a fitting tribute to his genius and the timelessness of his form.

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