A Good Woman

A Good Woman is a 2004 romantic comedy drama film directed by Mike Barker. The screenplay by Howard Himelstein is based on the 1892 play Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde. It is the fourth screen version of the work, following a 1916 silent film using Wilde's original title, Ernst Lubitsch's 1925 version, and Otto Preminger's 1949 adaptation entitled The Fan. Plot In 1930 New York City, femme fatale Mrs. Erlynne finds that she is no longer welcomed by either the high-ranking men she has seduced or the society wives she has betrayed. Selling her jewelry, she buys passage on a liner bound for Amalfi, Italy, where she apparently sets her sights on newlywed Robert Windermere. When his car frequently is seen parked outside her villa, local gossips become convinced the two are having an affair. Robert's demure wife Meg remains oblivious to the stories about the two circulating throughout the town, but when she discovers her husband's cheque register with numerous stubs indicating payments to Erlynne, she suspects the worst. What she doesn't know is that Erlynne actually is her mother, who has been extorting payments from Robert in return for keeping her secret. Meg is consoled with the advice, "Plain women resort to crying; pretty women go shopping." In retaliation for what she believes is her husband's transgression, Meg wears a revealing gown to her twenty-first birthday celebration, attended by Erlynnewearing the same dressin the company of Lord Augustus ("Tuppy"), a wealthy, twice-divorced man who has proposed marriage to Erlynne. Complications ensue when Lord Darlington professes his love for Meg and implores her to leave her supposedly wayward husbandan invitation she accepts.