It seems fairly clear that the night club owned by Ralph Fiennes and named The White Countess is meant to be seen as a sort of Rick's Bar East, from its cosmopolitan clientele', political overtones, the need for 'papers' and last, but not least, a backdrop of war, in this case the Sino-Japanese variety. It's equally clear from the comments I've read - mostly from the USA - that not many people are fully conversant with the expression 'White' Russian, which simply refers to members of the Russian aristocracy that came to an abrupt end in 1917, after which date all Russians, whether or not active Revolutionists, were 'Red'. So here we have ex-aristo Sophia (Natasha Richardson) roughing it with her titled family in Shanghai; two of the family members are Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave both woefully underused especially Vanessa in a role that anyone just out of Acting School could have done standing on their head. Merchant-Ivory do themselves no favours by choosing to remind us of Casablanca; whilst it's true that Natasha Richardson has inherited her all of her mother's heartbreaking beauty (well, leave us not lose our heads, about 90 per cent of it) it's equally true that the curiously wooden Fiennes is light years short of both Bogie's charisma and talent. There was more chemistry between Yassar Arafat and Golda Meir than between Fiennes and Richardson and when they ARE your love story then you got trouble, my friend, right here in River City. The best we can give this is an E for Effort.
Review of The White Countess
