CAN'T-PUT-DOWN
THE RED VIOLIN Directed by Francois Girard Screenplay by Girard & Don McKellar With Samuel L. Jackson, Greta Scacchi Not Rated 130 min.
"The Red Violin" does for the violin what "Babette's Feast" did for food. It draws you in with such visual beauty and extravagant lushness that you lose yourself in the sheer sensual pleasure of it, even when -- unlike "Babette's Feast" -- it spirals over the top into Ken Russell territory. "The Red Violin" is like a can't-put-down bestseller, enthralling even through its moments of guilty pleasure.
In a 17th century workshop, a master violin-maker (Carlo Cecchi) crafts his masterpiece: a near-perfect instrument, which he will give as a gift to the son he is expecting. His very pregnant wife (Irene Grazioli) sits in the kitchen of her home and listens to a tarot reading from her cook. The future the old woman tells is puzzling, full of travel, adventure, romance, and danger. As the movie spins on, it quickly becomes apparent that some astral wires got crossed; the predictions aren't for the woman, but the violin.
The film, written by director Francois Girard and actor Don McKellar (who previously collaborated, along with cinematographer Alain Dostie, on "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould"), uses as a frame a Montreal auction house's sale of the legendary Red Violin, so named for its unusual reddish varnish. This lost treasure has been recently rediscovered and authenticated by American expert Charles Morritz (Samuel L. Jackson). As the dark-hued instrument hesitantly swings into view on its auction house panel and tension mounts with the bidding, the story keeps reaching back to a succession of owners -- an Austrian monastery, a Viennese child prodigy (6-year-old Christoph Koncz ), a band of gypsies, a 19th century British virtuoso (Jason Flemyng) and his passionate mistress (Greta Scacchi, naked again!) Then it's off to the Mysterious East for this tough little number, where it languishes in a pawnshop, survives China's Cultural Revolution, and finally makes its way to our auction in a consignment of decadent Western instruments put on the block to raise a little decadent Western currency for the People's Republic.
There are, to be sure, moments of cheesy excess at which you can only grin -- Flemyng lying nude and stroking the neck of the instrument protruding from between his legs -- but that's all part of the fun. The ending is a bit hard to swallow. But there are moments of music so exquisite they make you weep. The magnificent score is by John Corigliano, and Joshua Bell performs the violin solos with the London Philharmonic under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen.
"The Red Violin" won't win over all the critics. But audiences will love it. It's a real page-turner.
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