Davies' 'Mirth' smart, compelling

Smartly adapted from Edith Wharton's turn of the century novel, Terence Davies' film "The House of Mirth" tells the story of Lily Bart (Gillian Anderson), a flower of high society New York wilting in the climate of vindictiveness and overall backbiting that was characteristic of women competing in the upscale "marriage market" early in the 20th century. \nWhile it's sometimes frustrating that the film fails to take into consideration an audience unfamiliar with the book -- some of the connections we are meant to recognize between consecutive scenes are a little oblique -- for the most part, Davies and Anderson, who plays Lily quite well, get across a sense of an alienated woman's growing desperation as she loses her grip on the social position she has been so meticulously groomed for.\nThe film begins with Lily's emergence from the shadows of a train station, and it is immediately clear from the calculated way she carries herself that this woman knows how she is seen through the eyes of other people. For roughly the first half of the film, we still get the strong sense of Lily's special charm and how it is felt and often sought out by people around her. These people sometimes wish to use her for the social value that her good looks and cultivated taste represent. \nIn fact, almost all the people in the film are interested in turning each other into tools for the purpose of their own social gain, the two exceptions to this rule being Lily and Lawrence Selden (Eric Stoltz), an intellectual lawyer who enjoys observing Lily (with no special design on her) from the margins of their social circle. \nEarly on, Lily enjoys a short flirtation with Lawrence which causes her to stray from her path to a wealthy husband. This ultimately produces in her a revulsion to the social "game" they all have to play, which combines manipulation and betrayal in equal amounts. Lily's growing carelessness leads to her accrual of debts from playing bridge, and this marks the beginning of her demise.\nOne of the most remarkable things about this film is the way Anderson's face evolves as the tragedy progresses. Davies uses lots of close-ups, and while this tends to remove Lily from her social context and often from the people around her, it does make an interesting comment on the cult of celebrity we experience today, which finds an odd parallel in Lily's dependence on the public eye and its appraisal of her in determining her own worth. \nEven if you aren't the kind of person who usually catches yourself with a strange desire to escape into a different social world, you might find this film worth seeing for the way it subtly questions how we construct roles for ourselves and how such roles can harm the people who perform them.