The White Countess movie review (2005)

Todd Jackson (Ralph Fiennes) is a classic Merchant-Ivory character. He is an exile. He hoped for great things as a young man and now, disillusioned, hopes for smaller victories. He placed great trust in romance, now sees it as a hazard. He has taste. He needs money. He is comfortable with disreputable behavior, as long as it is conducted by the rules. Inside his world, friendships are possible that are otherwise forbidden.

Consider his friend Mr. Matsuda (Hiroyuki Sanada). Everyone knows the Japanese are going to invade China, and that Mr. Matsuda is their Shanghai advance man. Mr. Matsuda knows Mr. Jackson was once considered "the last hope of the League of Nations." Mr. Jackson knows that Mr. Matsuda "would like to visit the bar of his dreams."

What would this ideal bar be like? In another bar, which is not the right kind of bar, Mr. Jackson overhears a conversation involving the Countess Sofia Belinsky (Natasha Richardson), once Russian royalty, now supporting her exiled family by working as a taxi dancer. Everyone knows that to make ends meet, taxi dancers must sometimes "fall in love" with their clients. Sofia's Russian family lives on her earnings while insulting her as a whore. Sofia's little daughter Katya (Madeleine Daly) doesn't know what a whore is, but defends her mother against her fierce grandmother and aunt (Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave): "If mama didn't go out to work, then you would have to." Quite so, and at wholesale.

One night, Sofia sees a situation developing in the shabby little bar where Jackson drinks, and quietly speaks to the blind man. She warns him he is about to be mugged and advises him to behave as her client. That will get him home unharmed. She wants no payment for this favor. "You're perfect," Jackson tells her. "You're what I need." She will be the hostess in his perfect little bar, talk with the customers, dance with them, decidedly not sleep with them.

The bar, when he wins the money to open it, is called the White Countess, and yes, in its way it is perfect. The jazz is good, the clientele is select, and Jackson has the right bouncers. The rest of the movie will involve the approaching collision between this perfect little world and the cataclysm of war.