Silk

Meant to be a swooning period epic of adventure and romance, François Girard's Silk—based on the novel by Alessandro Baricco—is actually a slow, static, faintly ridiculous melodrama, notable only for some splendid views of foreign locales. Set in the mid-19th century, the story follows young Frenchman Hervé Joncour (Michael Pitt)—working in a silk-manufacturing operation (infested by an epidemic that strikes the worms)—who must travel on an undercover mission to mysterious Japan to secure egg replacements, a journey presented with the lumbering gait of a tourism commercial. After numerous obstacles, Hervé arrives in the Land of the Rising Sun, where he is shepherded to a remote village ruled by an enigmatic nobleman who agrees to sell him the eggs he desires. But Hervé also becomes infatuated with the man's Chinese concubine—an obsession that undermines his relationship with his wife (Keira Knightley, onscreen briefly) when he returns home. Apparently intended as a lushly exotic story of tragic cross-cultural temptation, the ponderous treatment here saps the tale of all vitality, leaving the film little more than a succession of luscious-looking images. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)