Widow's Peak

There’s an old saying that revenge is a dish best served cold. That advise serves as the main entrée in Widow’s Peak, a black comedy from Ireland that tries to serve a thick stew, but runs short of ingredients. The bitter taste of its trick ending is largely diluted by half-baked direction.

Not that Widow’s Peak doesn’t have its moments. The script has some great verbal twists that pay tribute to the time-honored Irish ability to use language as a lethal weapon. Widow’s Peak has the kind of dialogue that would make for a good play, but the movie never lives up to the screenplay’s promise.

Set in a small Irish village in the 1920s, Widow’s Peak is a back-handed picture of a culture in which the men die early and the women lead long, contented lives as repressed widows. This graveyard matriarchy is ruled by Joan Plowright, who divides her time between snotty gossip and moral hypocrisy. This keeps her busy, but not so busy that she doesn’t find time to emotionally suppress her son (Adrian Dunbar) and give the local spinster (Mia Farrow) unwelcome lectures.

The miserable peace of this society is quickly disturbed by the arrival of a new widow (Natasha Richardson). She’s young, worldly and immodest, and she has romantic eyes fixed on Dunbar. Richardson instigates a feud with Farrow, a small quarrel that quickly escalates into a full-blown war and begins to expose the town’s darker secrets.

Widow’s Peak sounds like a Celtic version of Peyton Place, except for the fact that there’s something odd about the feud – which is where the trick comes in. Without it, the film would fall completely apart.