Review

Review Date: 8-January-06
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

Casanova (2005)

If Heath Ledger has truly resurrected his career with "Brokeback Mountain," we can consider "Casanova" the last remnant of his bad old days. For director Lasse Hallström, however, it represents a continued run of movies that don't live up to their promise. One can see where he was going with this tale of a man we all recognize without knowing why: Casanova, lover extraordinaire, the ideal subject for a bawdy comedy with heaving bosoms and long-haired cavaliers. But sure as Venice is sinking, he misses by a mile.

Yes, Venice is the setting for this yukfest (or yuck, to be more accurate) in which we find Giacomo Casanova (Ledger) working his irresistible charms upon the entire female population under forty. The year is 17-somethingorother, so the hero's activities involve a number of Catholic virgins and a sizable amount of danger, fornication being frowned upon by the Church. Unfortunately, he isn't allowed to go his randy way (there are no seduction or sex scenes, which is just plain wrong); instead, he's pierced through the heart by Francesca Bruni (Sienna Miller), a progressive young lady who publishes tracts about women's equality under a male pen name. Her arrival heralds the usual romance-lite imbroglio involving imposture, manipulation, and frustrated desire, with a couple of sidetracks and yards and yards of satin. It's meant to be a visually stimulating barrage of humorous stumbling toward a swoony and satisfying climax. Mostly it caused me to groan and think about syphilis.

Sex appeal and comedy both require a certain spark, and this is what "Casanova" lacks. Ledger looks a bit too cool for a legendary champion of the sack, which makes him a fitting mate for the drab and uninspired Miller. (Admittedly, she has nothing to work with.) What feeble heat there is derives from the luminous Lena Olin as Francesca's mother and the voluminous Oliver Platt as Francesca's betrothed, the Lard King of Genoa. If the jokes about fat and bacon don't get you, you might take perverse interest in the hammy appearance of Jeremy Irons as an Inquisitor from Rome, who's intent upon seeing Casanova swing from the gallows. (In an awkward detour into seriousness, he almost does. It's all downhill from there.)

So there's bacon and ham and also (I kid you not) a weird "joke" about pigs. Oinks without boinks: "Casanova" doesn't get the job done.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.