Kristin Scott Thomas is the young English widow staying ‘up at the villa’, whose life is changed forever by her encounters with American drifter Rowley Flint (Sean Penn)

up at the villa

They loved Somerset Maugham in the Golden Age of Hollywood. There were 12 adaptations of his novels and short stories between 1925 and 1964, including four films based on Of Human Bondage alone. But not since a new version of The Razor’s Edge starring Bill Murray failed to ignite the box office in 1985 has the great British storyteller’s name appeared on the credits of a movie. Not until now, that is, with director Philip Haas’ all-star version of Up at the Villa. Haas is not a film-maker to be much affected by fashion. His first film, The Music of Chance, screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 1993. His second, Angels and Insects, was in Competition two years later. Both movies had their own very distinctive voice - partly due to the fact that, in both cases, the screenplays were written by Haas’ wife and regular collaborator, Belinda. And they brought Haas to the attention of Sydney Pollack. “We loved both of those films,” says producer Geoff Stier, who works with Pollack at Mirage Enterprises. “The Music of Chance was about the politics of emotion and the power relations between a very small group of people in a confined setting.” It was a focus that seemed to be a perfect fit with Up at the Villa, to which Pollack had recently acquired the rights. What also helped was the fact that Haas and his team seemed able to get top results on somewhat limited means.

“On a very tight budget,” continues Stier, “they had made an incredibly lavish adaptation of a very complicated novel, Angels and Insects, which continued the themes of The Music of Chance. They made movies with a surface that seemed familiar, but which was undercut stylistically in ways that surprised you at every moment.” It turns out that Up at the Villa had been doing the rounds of the Hollywood studios since the thirties. At one stage, it was with Warner Bros, and British expat Christopher Isherwood was assigned to adapt it. But he couldn’t make a Hollywood heroine out of the story’s central character. She was based on someone Maugham had heard about while visiting friends in pre-war Florence: a very proper English woman who had had a long-term affair with her chauffeur, who eventually committed suicide as a result.