François Girard
Seta

"Once upon a time, a woman, the third wife of the Japanese emperor, a Chinese woman, was preparing tea. By mistake, she dropped a cocoon into the boiling water and saw a fiber emerge from it, which she then managed to transform into a thread strong enough to be woven."

This is the origin of Silk! The film is based on the famous novella by Alessandro Baricco. The adaptation was challenging, also because, as already happened with Novecento, bringing this novella to the screen could cause quite a few problems. However, the operation succeeded quite well.

The story, set in the mid-1800s, tells of a young scion of a French family who leaves his military career to become a silk worm trader. Before starting his business, the young man marries the beautiful local school teacher, with whom he dreams of one day having enough money to afford a fantastic garden full of lilies. The young man's father, the mayor of the town, becomes involved with an entrepreneur in reopening silk mills, to spin silk and make the town and all its inhabitants very rich. The entrepreneur will be the cause of the young man's abandonment of the military career, becoming the procurer of worms around the world, first in Africa and then in the more dreamlike Japan. I will stop here with the plot description not to spoil anything for those who have not yet seen it or read the book.

As for the film's adherence to the book, I will not express an opinion; I read it 10 years ago, and my memory might betray me.

The cast is excellent: the young scion is played by Michael Pitt, the protagonist of The Drimers, his beloved is the eternally beautiful Keira Kneightley, in yet another period role, and the entrepreneur is the excellent Alfred Molina, always at ease with "transalpine" films, remembered for the beautiful performance in Chocolat.

The photography is very evocative, successfully conveying the protagonist's moods. When he is with the object of his desire, the screen emits radiant and warm colors; when he is in Japan, the image is always shrouded in an aura of mystery, almost misty; very suggestive are the images of the baths surrounded by snow and steam.

Throughout the film, there is a single thread, the protagonist's introspection, who is caught choosing between an easy and likely happy love in France, never culminating in a child's birth, and his obsessive attraction to Japan, even in moments when it is plagued by internal wars.

A film, just like the book, steeped in love; delicate love, wild love, strongly erotic love, spiritual love!

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