A seemingly affluent American couple Jake and Tina (John Malkovich and Andie McDowell) live the indulgent high life racking up a bill on room service, massages, and other luxuries at a bourgeois London hotel, but all is not what it seems as Jake floats on less and less solid lines of credit – soon companies turn off his cards and banks won’t honor his checks. All their hopes lie with a rare fine art statuette, which may be the solution to their cash-flow problem, but not before the small piece catches the eye of the hotel’s new deaf-mute housekeeper. The rich Americans and poor Brit (along with her thug brother and just about everyone else who works at the hotel) find themselves in an increasingly risky game of fraud and intrigue revolving around the cursed and blessed item in The Object of Beauty, which, like the movie, pulls no punches in its representation of beauty for all its gifts and all its dangers.
“An elegant farce” – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
“It’s a spirited, sumptuously crafted tale” – Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times
“Like a John Cheever short story or a sociological snapshot by Tom Wolfe, The Object of Beauty is about people who have been so defined by their lifestyles that without those styles they scarcely exist.” – Roger Ebert
