The White Countess

Merchant Ivory's swan song is a romance built like a memory, lit with the soft glare of Shanghai nights. Ralph Fiennes's blind entrepreneur and Natasha Richardson's world-wise countess create a sanctuary that the outside world steadily erodes, and James Ivory directs with the unhurried confidence of a master. With Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave, it's old-fashioned in the best sense-elegant, adult, and bittersweet.