Casanova film review

certificate_12A

CASANOVA

The legendary story of Giacomo Casanova, the swashbuckling adventurer, writer, philosopher and notorious womanizer has been interpreted numerous different ways, but rarely has it been told with such frivolity. Director Lasse Hallström, known for such sensitive works as The Cider House Rules and What's Eating Gilbert Grape, has imbued Casanova with a whimsy and absurdist innuendo it's almost deserving of being re-titled Carry On Casanova. Almost. The only difference being this is far more wholesome and a lot less amusing than Sid James and Co.

In Hollywood, where actors are all too readily pigeonholed, it's easy to understand Heath Ledger's decision to play the quintessential heterosexual following his stunning turn as the homosexual cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain. His exuberant, jocular approach to Casanova is in marked contrast to the tightly reined repression of Ennis, though not nearly as convincing. For all his enthusiasm for the part, Ledger lacks a natural comic touch or the sheer magnetic charm to make him convincing as the fabled lover.

It's not wholly his fault. Quite what is the intended audience for Casanova is hard to fathom. The script by Jeffrey Hatcher and Kimberly Simi wavers in tone. Harboring farcical aspirations, it stops short of fully committing itself and as a consequence languishes in comic limbo, soliciting more incredulous smiles than flat out laughs. It certainly lacks the warmth and tenderness of Hallström's Chocolat. The arrival of an expansive Oliver Platt as the vibrant pork fat mogul Paprizzio doing a renaissance version of Austin Powers, replete with false teeth and spurious accent, gives things a ludicrous tendency only previously hinted at by the likes of Jeremy Irons' devilish portrayal of Bishop Pucci.

For a film about a premier seducer, Casanova offers very little in the way of evidence of his sexual prowess. Instead it focuses on his encounter with the beautiful Francesca (Sienna Miller), the one woman who is able to capture his heart and end his playboy days. The plot takes an unnecessarily convoluted sojourn as it meanders around 18th century Venetian society with its cast of colourful characters.