Lady Windermere, young and beautiful and full of life, is being wooed by the dashing cad Lord Darlington in "A Good Woman," a clever rearranging of Oscar Wilde's first great play, "Lady Windermere's Fan." Darlington uses as leverage the fact that her husband, Robert, is having a fling with the notorious Mrs. Erlynne, a bit older but still a head-turner and noted for her gimlet-eyed aggression in matters sexual. Lady Windermere, bitterly disappointed, dithers but begins to seriously consider Pretty Boy Darlington's wooing when she discovers her hubby, whom she thought so perfect, has even been paying the older woman over the months.

Screenwriter Howard Himelstein, who adapted Wilde's play, has set the film not at Lady Windermere's great London house in the high Victorian year of 1892 but among a smart set of fey aristo expat decadents on Italy's picturesque Amalfi coast in the early '30s. He has done some advantageous repositioning on the original text, somewhat akin to moving the furniture about but leaving the fabulous architecture alone.

For example, Lady Windermere is American (Scarlett Johansson). It's a good move, as Mrs. Windermere seems stupid and callow and spoiled, and that's perfectly within Johansson's slender grip. Far more interesting is Mrs. Erlynne. In this case, it's a gimlet-eyed Helen Hunt behind the eyeliner and the steely gaze. She's the engine driving the piece, and Hunt's up to that. But the pleasant discovery of this work is the excellence of the male performers: Tom Wilkinson as the rich, old Lord Augustus, who loves Mrs. Erlynne, and the heretofore unknown Mark Umbers as Robert Windermere, seemingly a callow rotter cheating on his perfect little wife.

All in all, "A Good Woman" retains ye olde Wilde's zing, his sense of pace and place, but most of all his snappy one-liners, and it finds a new way to showcase them brilliantly.

-- Stephen Hunter

Contains adult themes and profanity.