This adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan stars Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson in roles that beg to be flip-flopped. Hunt plays Mrs. Erlynne, a serial seducer of other women’s husbands in the 1930s, while Johansson plays Meg Windermere, a naive newlywed whose groom is in danger of become Mrs. Erlynne’s next target. Hunt has always had a way of making a
character’s scattered neuroses endearing, but the nasal whine that is part of her act doesn’t exactly make for seductive pillow talk. Johansson, meanwhile, was fresh off her performance as the femme fatale of Match
Point, in which she emphasized her real-life starlet stature nearly to the point of self-parody. With these two in the wrong parts, the erotic charge of the picture feels entirely out of whack.
