Silk by Francious Girard (2007)
I am a huge fan of Francious Girard, and especially 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould and the Red Violin, but this film is not the same quality, other than it’s gorgeous cinematography, production design and costumes, but the story, acting and direction fall a bit flat, even with a cast including some impressive actors. I kept hoping their was some amazing point made to this film, which is an adaption of the Italian author Alessandro Baricco’s novel, but overall the film just fell flat to me, and I never saw the deep connections between any of these characters. Also the lackluster effects, and addition of some horrible fake snow attempted the mar the gorgeous picture, but the images did come through, it is just too bad the story didn’t. And the fact that the characters are supposed to be French, and yet speak American English seems very strange, especially with everything in Japan in Japanese without subtitles. And another bad notes is that the film is under 2 hours, but feels more like 3 or even 4 hours long.
In 19th Century France, the young Hervé (Michael Pitt) is a military officer, serving because it is what his father wishes. Hervé is dating a beautiful young woman named Hélene (the very underused Kiera Knightley), and is happy to leave the military and marry her, when a new business opportunity is presented to him. His town makes it’s money through silk, and the silkworms have been infected with a disease, so the local silk purveyor, Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) gets the heads of the town to put up money, and they send out young Hervé to get fresh eggs. First he quickly goes to Africa, and returns with eggs, but they are already infected, so the next time Hervé is sent across the continent to Japan, and blindfolded and snuck in country to a Japanese village lead by Hara Juberi (the great Yahusho Koji). While there Hervé falls for the mistress of Jubei’s (Ashina Sei), who touches him once, and he sees her breasts while she bathes in a hot spring. Hervé returns with the eggs and becomes a rich man, buying Hélene a lovely home, where she can build her dream garden.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
There is trouble in Japan, but Hervé returns again, and is still obsessed with the mistress, and she gives him another woman to have sex with, and she gives him a note in Japanese, which he cannot read. While there Hervé also meets another Geijin, a man who sells guns Schuyler (Callum Keith Rennie from so much of late, including Battlestar Galactica and Californication), and tells him the woman may not even be Japanese, and when Hervé leaves he sees the man’s crushed glasses, proving he has died.
Hervé returns home with the eggs, and the town is still prosperous, but he still looks at his letter, and goes to Balbadou to see where he can get it translated, so heads to a high priced whore named Madame Blanche (Miki Nakatani) who is a Japanese woman. She translated the letter as saying “Return to me or I will die” and Hervé becomes obsessed with returning to China, even though the situation there is very bad, and there are new methods to separate out the diseased eggs, but he convinces Baldabiou to let him go.
On his return to Japan Hervé finds the village burned, but finds the mistresses young servant (Kanata Hongo) who leads him to Jubei and a covered cart that could contain the woman, but they don’t want him, and murder the boy. Hervé gets eggs in China, but it is too late, and they hatch on the way, wasting the whole trip and all the money.
The town is in dire straights, having used all it’s money for the trip, so Hervé hires the town to build Hélene’s garden, but he is still distant.
Hervé then gets another letter from the concubine in Japanese, and he takes it to Madam Blanche, now in Paris and has it translated, and it is very erotic, but says they can never be together again.
Hélene then gets very sick, and ends up dyeing, and being buried in her garden. Hervé then returns to the Japanese Whore, and gets her to admit that she wrote the letter, but gets informed that she just wrote it down, and in fact his wife Hélene told her what to say, and she wrote it, and wished she was that woman the whole time, and Hervé says she was.
It ends with Hervé sitting in his garden with his young gardener Ludovic (Mark Rendall) who grew up around there, and they knew his whole life, and who Hervé tells his whole story.
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Gorgeous, but so flat, nothing to hold it together.