The White Countess

This film is the last Merchant Ivory collaboration - following the death of Ishmail Ivory. Certainly not their best - but well worth seeing, written with great sensitivity by Kazuo Ishiguro. You may have difficulty finding it - my usual choice at West India Quay doesn't have and it isn't showing at any cinema in East London, but I found it at the Greenwich Picture House - a cinema I'd recommend (although not cheap) - especially if you have the opportunity to use the screening room - with enormous padded armchairs.
The film is set in Shanghai in the years prior to the Japanese takeover. Thw White Countess is both Natasha Richardson, a Russian emigre washed up on the shores of China with very little but her title and social graces as assets, and the bar opened by Ralph Fiennes playing superbly (and believably) an American blind former diplomat (or diplomatist) who opens his vision of the perfect bar (in a City seemingly awash with bars of all kinds). This bar is spookily reminiscent of a series of Jack Vetriano pictures - in fact the whole film is slightly like a moving Jack Vetriano from start to finish.
The film isn't profound, but is entertaining. It does tie up all the loose ends rather too neatly, but remains believable. The Redgrave family (it stars not only Natasha Ricardson but both Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave) are as always totally wonderful, and I was gripped in the last twenty minutes as the Japanese forces (led by the sinister Hiroyuki Sanada) sweep in to the City of sin.
Well worth seeing - find it and go view it!