Silk

Silk, based on a 91-page novella by Alessandro Baricco, casts Michael Pitt as Herve Joncour – a 19th century silkworm smuggler who finds himself caught up in an obsessive relationship with a Japanese concubine (Sei Ashina). Director François Girard admittedly paints an evocative picture of a very specific time and place, but his decision to infuse the film with an oppressively deliberate pace proves to be disastrous. Though there’s initially something kind of fascinating about all of this, there comes a point at which one’s patience starts to wear awfully thin – with Girard’s increasing reliance on long, dialogue-free sequences surely playing a significant role in Silk‘s inevitable downfall. Pitt’s typically impenetrable performance doesn’t help matters, as the actor transforms Herve into a decidedly unsympathetic figure whose motivations remain muddled throughout the movie’s overlong running time (ie why does he become so fixated on the aforementioned Japanese concubine in the first place?) The lack of overt instances of exposition consequently ensures that one’s enjoyment of the movie is directly related to one’s familiarity with Baricco’s book, and, although there’s certainly no denying the effectiveness of Alain Dostie’s lush visuals, Silk is ultimately the sort of film that’s easier to admire than it is to enjoy.

*1/2 out of ****