An excellent review by Matthew Turner, but why only 3 out of 5 stars?

I hesitated a long time between rating it with 4 or 5 stars. Of its genre, it would be hard to better, but I guess we should reserve the full 5 stars for something more monumental and 'worthy'...?

Some comparisons:
1. The recent Brideshead Revisited touched on similar themes, but in a very different way. For me, the light-footed approach of Easy Virtue was the more effective.
2. Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006) showed the way for treating a period subject with a thoroughly modern sensibility (again, with splendid music).