Five aimless tales of a fiddle in red

Rating: Null/10 (27 September 1999)

This is a "portmanteau" movie, with five separate stories involving the same violin on a three century journey from its creation in Cremona, Italy, to its sale at auction in modern-day Montreal. The auction ties the stories together, sort of, but the viewer is still left with a feeling of discontinuity since the object, beautiful and possessed of a fine tone, is still that, an object. The music is interesting and pleasant but can't replace the lack of a strong storyline. The story of the violin's creation is a bit poignant, but mostly trite. The second story, the sad tale of the child prodigy from the Alpine orphanage, has the most impact, but ultimately is pointless. In the third story, Jason Flemyng does a terrific Chopinesque musical Lothario, reminding us that the 19th had its brattish pop stars, but his sticky end is a bit pointless too. Greta Scacchi does make a nice femme fatale though. The fourth story, set in Mao's China at the time of the Cultural Revolution, is pretty dull. The ending, at the auction, is pretty silly.
Back in the 1960s, the director Anthony Asquith, did something similar with a motor car in "The Yellow Rolls--Royce" (his last movie). There was a fair bit of sexual hanky-panky in and around the Roller but that seemed fitting. The stories were separate but on a similar theme, love, sex, betrayal. This film, on the other hand, says something about creative passion, but I'm not sure quite what - maybe how hard it is to control, to channel productively. It also says, if you want to get money out of five different film funders, give 'em five different plots. Oh well. The crew(s) must have had a good time.