The White Countess

The White Countess (2005) is a Merchant Ivory drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by James Ivory from a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro — written years before his Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017. Set in late-1930s Shanghai, it follows Todd Jackson, a blind American diplomat who channels his displacement into building a nightclub: a deliberate small world sealed against the one collapsing outside.

Ralph Fiennes plays Jackson as a man who navigates entirely by sound and touch, hearing the city shift around him without being able to see it. Natasha Richardson is Sofia, a Russian émigré from a dispossessed noble family who has been working as a dancing hostess, whom Jackson recruits as the soul of his club. Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave play her relatives — White Russian exiles keeping up appearances in rented rooms. Hiroyuki Sanada adds another layer as a Japanese figure who reads the political current more clearly than anyone around him.

This was the last film produced by James Ivory and Ismail Merchant together; Merchant died in May 2005 before the picture reached theaters. Stream The White Countess (2005) online on iFILM.