In a sentenceTwo lovers, three accents and one photogenic island; the island wins on points
Cephalonia, 1940. Pelagia (Penélope Cruz), daughter of the island’s doctor, Dr. Iannis (John Hurt), is engaged to the fisherman Mandras (Christian Bale), who leaves to fight the Italians on the Albanian front. Greece falls the following spring and the Italian army lands on the island. Captain Antonio Corelli (Nicolas Cage), an artillery officer whose men would rather sing opera than fight, is billeted in the doctor’s house, with medical supplies thrown in as rent. His friend Captain Günther Weber (David Morrissey) is the German liaison, polite and badly outnumbered. Mandras’s mother Drosoula (Irene Papas) keeps house and keeps count, the strongman Velisarios (Pietro Sarubbi) fires his cannon at the village festival, and Pelagia, promised to a man at the front, finds the enemy sleeping under her roof.
John Madden’s film of Louis de Bernières’ novel has a beautiful island, a fine John Hurt and a war that arrives too late to help. Between them, a romance in which Nicolas Cage is more at ease with the mandolin than with Penélope Cruz.
John Madden’s film of Louis de Bernières’ novel runs 131 minutes and spends most of them on a Greek island in wartime, waiting for two people to fall in love. The island does its part. The people do not, and that is the whole of the problem. There is a good deal here to look at, a fine performance from John Hurt, and a stretch near the end when the film remembers it is set in a war; none of it is enough to carry a romance that never catches.
Shawn Slovo’s screenplay keeps the bones of the book: Cephalonia under Italian occupation, a doctor’s daughter, the officer billeted in her father’s house, the fisherman fiancé away at the front. What it cuts is nearly everything else, and the film it leaves behind is a love story with a war in the next room. Madden is plainly after a serious subject carried lightly. Here the lightness reads as a lack of weight.
John Toll photographs Cephalonia as a place you would want to be. He shoots the harbour early, with the water flat and the limestone behind it pale, and the village square at midday in hard shadow and whitewash. Jim Clay’s production design gives the doctor’s house a courtyard that looks lived in, with the surgery opening off it, and Alexandra Byrne keeps the Italian uniforms creased and sun-faded rather than pressed for the camera. Stephen Warbeck threads a mandolin through the strings and, when the soldiers sing, has the sense to let the voices carry on their own. This is careful work, and for a while it is enough to be going on with.
John Hurt is the reason to stay. His Dr. Iannis is a dry, tired man who treats the occupiers as he treats everyone, as patients first and nuisances second, and he gets the best scenes, haggling for morphine and watching his daughter with a face that already knows how this goes. Penélope Cruz plays Pelagia as someone holding something down, and her face does more of the film’s work than the script gives her words for. David Morrissey’s Captain Günther Weber is a decent man who likes the singing, and Morrissey plays the decency so plainly that he becomes the film’s one real source of unease. Christian Bale’s Mandras goes to the front in the first act and comes back changed, and the film seems faintly embarrassed to have him in the house.
Then there is Nicolas Cage. He plays Corelli as a man who has decided to be delightful and will keep at it until everyone agrees, and the accent, which sits somewhere between an Italian waiter and a man impersonating one, makes the decision hard to sit through. We did not believe for one minute that these two were in love, and the reason is on the screen: Cage plays every scene to the back of the square while Cruz plays hers to the person in front of her, and the two performances never meet. When he picks up the mandolin he is likeable. When he puts it down he is a tourist.
Mick Audsley cuts the middle hour at one unhurried pace, and it is the wrong one. Scene after scene has the same shape: a walk, a look, a line about the war, a meal. We found ourselves watching the light move on the hills and counting goats, and felt slightly guilty about it, because the film so obviously wants us watching the lovers. Then the war arrives, in a turn we will not describe, and the film wakes up. Toll and Audsley stage the fighting in daylight, clearly, so that you always know where everyone is, and Hurt and Morrissey are given something to do. It is the best passage in the picture and it comes late.
Set beside the wartime romances it is modelled on, The English Patient above all, it is shorter, prettier and far less sure of what it is about. That film made you wait and paid you for waiting. This one makes you wait and shows you the sea. Most critics landed near where we have, and their complaints cluster where ours do: the accent, the pairing, the trimming of the novel.
Watch it on a grey evening if what you want is an island, a doctor and a mandolin; the 15 certificate is earned by the last act rather than the love scenes. At home it makes a decent travel programme about Cephalonia, interrupted every so often by a love story.
Nobody is won over. Of twelve reviews, not one is positive; they divide evenly between mixed and poor. What praise there is goes almost entirely to the island. Critics return again and again to Cephalonia, to the photography and the sweep of the locations, and several say the film briefly comes alive once the war arrives and it has to stage action rather than courtship.
The complaints cluster on the romance and on Nicolas Cage. Reviewers find his Italian accent a distraction and his love scenes unconvincing, and most feel the adaptation has pared the novel down to a tidy love story and lost it in the process. The spread is wide: a few find it pleasant enough to pass an evening, while the Los Angeles Times and The AV Club dismiss it outright, the latter objecting to how gently it treats occupation. Eye for Film alone finds Penélope Cruz carrying the darker feeling the rest of the film avoids.
The accessible page does not reveal the critic’s verdict. It provides no specific praise or complaint about the film.
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Read the full review →The review finds the film underwhelming, with a flat narrative and unconvincing central romance. It praises the photography and says the story briefly grips when it turns into a tense war film.
Read the full review →Errigo finds the film visually appealing and intermittently affecting, but ultimately too insubstantial. She singles out the awkward accents as a major source of absurdity, while noting that the ending works better emotionally than the book’s.
Read the full review →Elley finds the film emotionally unsatisfying, though its physical appeal makes it pleasant enough for an uncomplicated moviegoing experience. He praises the Greek locations and visual sweep, while criticizing Nicolas Cage’s unconvincing romantic performance and the muddled final reel.
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Mediterraneo · not reviewed yetItalian soldiers stranded on a Greek island again, this time with the comedy allowed to stay.
The English PatientThe wartime romance done with patience; longer, slower and it earns its tears.
Zorba the GreekCrete, Anthony Quinn and a much younger Irene Papas; the island as a character, not scenery.
Rome, Open CityOccupation without the sunshine, shot in the streets while the war was barely over.
Ill Met by Moonlight · not reviewed yetCrete under the Germans, British officers in disguise, and Dirk Bogarde enjoying himself.
