A Very Expensive Fiddle

Rating: Null/10 (1 August 1999)

Dir., Francois Girard. A 300+ year-old violin passes through the hands of its Italian maker, a sickly young German protege in Vienna, a sensual English superstar virtuoso who looks like Carrot Top with sideburns, and a female Party member in Mao's Shanghai. This overlong, dull, contrived cut-and-paste job overlayed with fortune-teller narration masquerades as an intricately woven Euro-saga (even composer John Corigliano couldn't make it sound important), and it should have been called '32 time shifts for nothing'. The only saving graces are Joshua Bell's astonishing solos and Jean-Luc Bideau's performance as the boy's teacher. Co-starring Greta Scacchi and Samuel L. Jackson.