Film

Silk

Cert: 15

Description: Herve falls in love with Helene and they marry, but the couple's happiness is tempered with the realisation that she can never give him the children he so desperately craves. He invests his time in the silk mills run by his wealthy father and fellow entrepreneur Baldabiou. Unfortunately, the silkworms are ravaged by disease so Baldabiou despatches Herve to Japan to buy eggs from an overlord. In turn, Herve meets the overlord's beautiful mistress, with whom the young man develops an all-consuming obsession.

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Dir: Francois Girard.

Cast: Michael Pitt, Keira Knightley, Sei Ashina

Country: Can/Fr/Ita/UK/Jap.

Year: 2007.

Duration: 108mins

Not so silky

Material girl: Keira Knightley plays an officer's wife transferred to Japan in the anaemic Silk

Planet Terrible

By Derek Malcolm
8 Nov 2007

If ever a film suffered from chronic anaemia, it is this beautiful but painfully flaccid period piece from François Girard, director of the Academy Award-winning Red Violin.

It has a thoroughly miscast Michael Pitt as a young military officer sent off to Japan to find silkworms that have not been ravaged by disease. There he meets a beautiful girl (Yoko Yakusho) who obsesses him for the rest of his life, despite the fact that he's married to Keira Knightley's pretty schoolteacher.

The film, like the short novel by Alessandro Baricco from which it is taken, is in turn obsessed with travel. The rest, unfortunately, murders time and patience.