Period movies based in the 1800s are often forced to make up in extravagant costumes what they lack in thrilling adventure and plot. Few send their characters across continents or dare to push conventional damsel-in-distress archetypes like director Franà §ois Girard's latest visual masterpiece, Silk,"" does. With collaborations from the artistic staff of ""Pride and Prejudice,"" ""Silk"" breathes new life into a tired genre.
Girard truly delivers in this dramatic and heart-wrenching love story based on a novel by Alessandro Baricco. The indecisive Hervé Joncour (Michael Pitt) is trapped in a military career he never wanted. Lucky enough to marry Hélà ""ne (Keira Knightley), he is lost in wedded bliss until friend and entrepreneur Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) reopens the town's defunct silk mill and convinces him to journey to Japan to smuggle essential silk worm eggs back to France. In Japan, he is mesmerized by the beautiful wife of a Japanese trader. He returns to his own wife the following spring but his memories of the anonymous Japanese woman never fade.
Baldabiou calls on him again and again to return, and each journey brings more eggs but pulls him deeper into obsession with his Japanese mistress. Joncour fails to heed the warnings of his colleagues and the pleadings of his wife and returns to Japan one last time to find everything has changed. The country is decimated by war and will never be the same, nor will he. Joncour struggles to face his guilt and to reconcile his love for his wife with his lust for the nameless Japanese woman.
Pitt gracefully portrays the indecision of Joncour, convincing audiences equally of his love for his wife and his lust for his mistress, while Knightley is perfect as the film's most honest and benevolent character. Faithful to her husband until the end, she knows far more than she lets on, and ultimately reveals herself to be the story's most complicated character. As husband and wife, Knightley and Pitt share an intimate chemistry that demands the attention of every member in the audience despite the film's minimal script.
Girard chooses to show rather than tell, and trades cliché lines about love and affection for extreme close-ups on body parts such as eyes, lips and hands to convey sultry sensuality between his characters. Dramatic camera angles, high-contrast lighting and colorful symbolism aid in setting an exotic mood and stand in for the unspoken emotions in the script.
Girard pushes a tight and linear plot, leading the viewers chronologically through Joncour's marriage and subsequent tryst, as well as misleading them into a false sense of security. He is unafraid to use the secret of the affair to add suspense and constantly raise the emotional strength of the story.
It is absolutely impossible to categorize ""Silk"" as just another melodramatic love story. The film truly demonstrates not only a mastery of the dramatic genre, but the director's commanding control over the emotions of his audience. Despite its very linear and deceptively predictable plot, ""Silk"" will make the trip well worth it, making up for its lack of exposition with its honest and raw portrayal of emotions. Pushing the process of making silk as an analogy for the fragility of life and love, Girard's message is inescapable - Tread carefully, for love is a delicate thing.
