Ah, yes. Young love. Let's meet two impoverished sisters. Now let's meet the new neighbors: two rich brothers who live in the castle next door. Bet you can't guess what's going to happen next...
Yep. The plot's fairly transparent from the outset. The only question that remains is which brother will fall in love with which sister, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, all four of them seem to fall in deep, abiding, heartbreaking, world-ending love after one line of poetry, one shaken pitchfork, or just generally at the drop of a feather. More unfortunately, the director chooses to present this as deep, weighty drama.
I would have liked to have been able to say that the actors and director did the best they could with the material they had to work with. But the film is acted with an it-must-be-almost-lunchtime languor, and edited to take forty-five minutes of story and fit in on nearly two hours of film.
Perhaps if I'd been able to have one ounce of sympathy for the "tragic" plight of any of the silly, one-dimensional characters, the film wouldn't have dragged the way it did. But as it was, the costumes and scenery stole the show.
At the end, as Cassandra, the film's heroine, stands on the tower of her crumbling castle and declares "I have loved, I love,"--long, dramatic pause, as though the audience hasn't figured out what the last line will be--" I will love," I could only find myself hoping that the tales of her future loves did not make their way into the hands of a film producer.
Yep. The plot's fairly transparent from the outset. The only question that remains is which brother will fall in love with which sister, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, all four of them seem to fall in deep, abiding, heartbreaking, world-ending love after one line of poetry, one shaken pitchfork, or just generally at the drop of a feather. More unfortunately, the director chooses to present this as deep, weighty drama.
I would have liked to have been able to say that the actors and director did the best they could with the material they had to work with. But the film is acted with an it-must-be-almost-lunchtime languor, and edited to take forty-five minutes of story and fit in on nearly two hours of film.
Perhaps if I'd been able to have one ounce of sympathy for the "tragic" plight of any of the silly, one-dimensional characters, the film wouldn't have dragged the way it did. But as it was, the costumes and scenery stole the show.
At the end, as Cassandra, the film's heroine, stands on the tower of her crumbling castle and declares "I have loved, I love,"--long, dramatic pause, as though the audience hasn't figured out what the last line will be--" I will love," I could only find myself hoping that the tales of her future loves did not make their way into the hands of a film producer.