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Silk
Sadly, Silk is a case in point. French Canadian director Francois Girard is a talented chap - his Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould was a wonderfully spry, innovative alternative to a traditional biopic, and The Red Violin had some fans too. But it's been nine years since then, and it's possible that when it came to Silk, Girard is guilty of over-thinking the material. Much of it looks exquisite, but the characters seem still-born, and the story, well, it's hardly there at all. In what is probably the film's fatal flaw, baby-faced slacker Michael Pitt has been cast as a 19th Century French silk merchant, Hervé Joncour. This is the kind of miscasting that occurs when accountants at international sales agents call the shots. Pitt has a certain art-house cachet on the strength of Bertolucci's The Dreamers and Van Sant's Last Days, but it's obvious he's been cast on the assumption that it takes a North American actor to crack the North American market. That's surely a fallacy, and Pitt's pulling power in this role is probably close to zero. Ralph Fiennes might have been a better choice. Or better yet a Frenchman: perhaps Pitt's Dreamers' costar Louis Garrel.
A third improbable Frenchman, Alfred Molina, perks things up from time to time as Hervé's boss and sponsor, Baldabiou, who spends his leisure time attempting to master the art of one-armed pool. It's Baldabiou who sends the young man off to Japan - in the nineteenth century terra incognita to European traders - to bring back uncontaminated silkworm eggs. The journey is long and perilous, but at least it affords stunning travelogue footage - easily the film's best asset. Guided, blindfolded, to a remote feudal village, Hervé signals his willingness to trade gold for eggs, and fortunately the local lord speaks English (or is it French? It's hard to tell) and resists the temptation to murder the boy and steal his money. Taking tea with his new business associate, the young man is bewitched by a concubine (newcomer Sei Ashina). Although the two of them cannot converse, and Hervé believes himself to be in love with his wife, he becomes infatuated with the thought of the girl, and itches to return to the Orient to see her again. (A romantic obsession Pitt translates into his usual mope.)
Luis Bunuel would have appreciated that little scene. He would have found the surreal comedy in this exotic erotica. Girard doesn't have that kind of steel; he just keeps piling on the romantic agony and whipping up Ryuchi Sakamoto's overblown score in the hopes of extracting a tear or two. Maudlin, miscast and unforgivably self-indulgent, Silk is wallpaper for art-house cinemas too timid to show real art. Tom Charity 
Critics' Reviews
If Marco Polo had been a Valley girl, his diaries might have read like Michael Pitts somnolent voiceover, which... read more on www.timeout.com Members' ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |
It's possible to make a film about very little… the veteran French filmmaker 
In any case, 
Alessandro Baricco's acclaimed novella runs to just 112 pages, so you will trust me when I say the film's 112 minutes are not exactly action-packed. Some excitement seems to be in the offing when Hervé foolishly insists on returning to Japan in the midst of civil war, but don't get your hopes up for anything resembling action. When Hervé visits a brothel, it's to ask the madam to translate a letter. 
Maitland McDonagh, Time Out