Not ready for the major league

Rating: 4/10 (27 December 2006)

Sofia Coppola tries the "big jump" to the major league of cinema, but fails. This is not at all an awful movie, but is evidently too ambitious for the current skill of our good Sofia. The first 20 minutes are excellent, then the movie starts to drag on too much, the soundtrack is excellent from the musical point of view, but is sort of randomly arranged with no clear "idea" behind it (for example: ten seconds of The Cure while king and queen descend the stairs, then an abrupt stop and the music changes, very badly done). Actors are good and there are many good ideas, everything is shown and very little is explained, for example. But the one, real, major flaw of the movie is... Asia Argento... She can barely speak, let alone act. We get rid of her early in the movie, but it's never too early... Not a fully accomplished movie, I'd say, Sofia looks for Greenaway, but all she finds are hints of Baz Luhrmann. She is not yet a great director, I'm afraid.