Silk Review
By Joe Lozito
"Silk" Dud
Everything that's wrong with "Silk" - director François Girard's sumptuously photographed but achingly dull period piece - can be glimpsed early in the film when young silk trader Herve travels from his hometown in France to a remote Japanese village to trade for silkworm eggs. This being the 19th century, the trip takes some time. And as Mr. Girard's camera embraces vista after stunning vista, Herve reads the list of locations like items on a shopping list. Played by Michael Pitt, who delivers every line as if it's his first time constructing a sentence, Herve spends the entire film in a kind of open-mouthed haze like a pouting high schooler reporting for detention. His haunted monotone recalls
"Episode II" era Hayden Christensen. This is one of the worst performances I've seen in a long, long time.
The tragic casting of Mr. Pitt proves insurmountable for the otherwise ambitious film. The story, adapted by Mr. Girard and Michael Golding from the novel by Alessandro Baricco, follows young Herve as he's forced by a mysterious egg-killing virus to seek silkworms in the Far East. When he arrives in Japan and becomes instantly smitten with the leader's concubine (Sei Ashina, another blank canvas), "Silk" has the potential to be a steamy bodice-ripper. But without a leading man to latch onto, the film is left hanging by a (ahem) thread. There's one piece of true suspense in the film - when the concubine slips Herve a note written in (wouldn't you know it?) Japanese. Asking the leader to translate it might be a little touchy. When what could have been a poetic ending arrives after a feels-like-longer-than-it-is 110 minutes, you've long since stopped caring.
Keira Knightley, back in a corset after 2005's vastly superior "Pride & Prejudice", is relegated to the thankless role of doting housewife. Her Helene is left childless at home while her husband blankly traipses off to Japan for months at a time. Only Alfred Molina (always a pleasure) injects any energy into the film, proving that some people in 19th century France actually knew how to have a good time.
It doesn't help matters any that Mr. Girard ("The Red Violin") holds the film to a deadly pace, or that his script is full of stilted, self-important one-liners like "Give me a child" or "And then something extraordinary happened". And the less said about Mr. Pitt's voice-over the better. When he says, blankly, "it tore me up inside" you kinda just have to take his word for it.
Visually, "Silk" is every bit as stunning as a fine piece of that much sought-after titular fabric. The cinematography by Alain Dostie is breathtaking throughout and "Silk" might be worth seeing with the sound off. But as a story of unrequited love across distant continents, "Silk" quickly unravels.
