A big disappointment

Rating: 5/10 (22 August 2001)

Contains spoilers, if anything could be considered able to spoil this mess. At times the cinematography equals some of the book's verbal power. Cephalonia is gorgeous. But this is the most miscast movie I've ever seen. Sometimes the offbeat casting works, as in the case of John Hurt and Irene Pappas as Pelagia's father and Mandras' mother, but the rest of the time it's pretty horrifying. Nicolas Gage has no romantic appeal (and gives a ludicrous performance) and Penelope Cruz, in addition to being too old, has a horrible voice that is so nasal and whiny that it is groan-inducingly comic. Worst casting is the chubby old maidish Brit for the island's head Nazi. He gives the impression he's going to bake a nice kidney pie for dear old mum, rather than promote the interests of the master race. The events of the book are depicted, but there is no context for them, so nothing makes much sense. (The healing of the insane, the detonation of the Turkish bomb, etc.) For example, Carlo does save Correlli, but Carlo has two lines at the beginning of the movie and then disappears until his final scene. You have no idea who he is, much less of his great homosexual love for Correlli. The alcoholic priest has been reduced to a walk-on who gets killed by a Nazi at the end. There is no `La Scala'. The Italians sing merely because they're Italian rather than because they want to disguise hemorrhoidal pain. Mandras' character has been changed completely. In the film he doesn't become a homicidal Communist. Rather than practice sexual abstinence, as Correlli wisely counsels in the book, he and Pelegia hop in the sack right away with no worry whatever that she would be perceived as a collaborator. The movie makes virtually no sense. They tried to fix the book's ending, but it doesn't work because the characters have no depth and you don't care. Psipsina is not in the film either. Worst point in the movie is Pelagia's tango (it rivals Maria Montez's choreography in Cobra Woman.) It could have been a great film, but they blew it. I can't believe they didn't show Mandras swimming with the dolphins. This was a big disappointment.