Easy Virtue is the adaptation of the 1924 Noel Coward play about a young Englishman, John Whittaker (Ben Barnes), who falls madly in love with Larita (Jessica Biel), a young sexy and glamorous American, and they marry impulsively. However, she is not received warmly by her mother-in-law, Mrs. Whittaker (Kristin Scott Thomas), who does everything to manipulate her son to stay away from Larita. Even though Larita is charming and tries to fit in, Mrs. Whittaker’s hold over her son proves to be a force she cannot reckon with. She then must decide between the love of her husband and her freedom from living in a suffocating house.

The film also stars Colin Firth (Bridget Jones’ Diary, Love Actually) as Mr. Whittaker, Kris Marshall (Death At a Funeral, Love Actually) as Furber, the Whittaker’s butler; Katherine Parkinson (The Boat That Rocked, The IT Crowd) as eldest daughter Marion and Kimberley Nixon (Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging, Wild Child, Cranford) playing the youngest of the family, the impressionable Hilda.

The film is directed and written by Stephan Elliot (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Eye of the Beholder) and is produced by Barnaby Thompson, Joe Abrams and James D. Stern. Sheridan Jobbins also helped pen the script. 
 
Noel Coward wrote Easy Virtue when he was just 23 and while it was one of his least known works, it played to considerable success.  A young Alfred Hitchcock produced a silent film version of the play in 1928.

The producers were big fans of Coward’s work since his 1974’s Private Lives and wanted the chance to remake Easy Virtue since none of Coward’s witty dialogue could come through in the silent Hitchcock version.

Thompson says, “There is something very appealing about this story, which I believe is universal. It’s a story about a guy who meets a beautiful woman, they fall in love and marry and he brings her home to meet the family. So far so good you think, but the mother‐in‐law takes an instant dislike to the girl, and then it is about the sparks that fly thereafter...and we all have mothers‐in‐law.” 

Thompson comments on dealing with the challenge of adapting Coward for modern audiences, “Coward tends to play it very hard and cold, that’s the nature of his comedy, and so the process of the adaptation was to make sure we care about the characters and give it a thoroughly contemporary feel.  The significance of the work that was done on the script was to really build up the emotional landscape of the piece, so you realize that at the beginning it’s all fun and there are wonderfully barbed comments being thrown about, but actually it’s about a group of people who are fighting for their lives and it really matters what the outcome is.  If the film succeeds, it will be a combination of Noel Coward’s wit and the ability of Stephan and Sheridan to make us care about the people themselves.”

Elliot is an experienced director, but has been away from the camera for awhile, which didn’t scare producers. It fueled their enthusiasm to make a different kind of movie.

Elliot speaks of his long absence from the film industry and just what kind of movie he didn’t want to make. “After famously skiing into a mountain in France in 2004 and breaking my back, pelvis and legs, which kept me off my feet for the best part of three years,” begins Elliott, “I had a lot of time to think.  I had previously decided I had had enough of the film industry.  The accident experience gave me the kick‐on I needed, and I was trying to think of ideas when presented with Noel Coward. My first thought was ‘why on earth are you bringing me Noel Coward?’  Period films really weren’t for me; I don’t think I have ever sat through an entire period film in my life!  But Barnaby said that was exactly the reason he was bringing it to me, and so I read it and thought, that little sense of rebellion that’s in the piece, specifically with a modern girl like Larita being dragged into a period film and slowly going mad... is where I found myself as a writer.  I thought, aha, I can actually have some fun with this. Of course I wasn’t allowed to do my standard farting jokes or put men in dresses, they had to restrain me a little,” he says laughing.
 
The producers and Elliot wanted to make a modern film for modern audiences with a contemporary voice, and when working with Jobbins in writing the script they wanted to find a way to bring comedy without being too heavy handed. Elliot paraphrased Coward and said, “Wit is a spice, not a sauce.” And Jobbins says that’s what led to the defining style of their screenplay.

Easy Virtue opens in select theaters May 22nd.

—Jessica Delli Santi