Odd, unique, beautifully photographed character study/love story.
Two eccentrics, one the rich owner of a glass-works (Cate Blanchette), and one an emotionally damaged and physically fragile young minister (Ralph Fiennes) are united in friendship, and eventually romance by their obsession with gambling.
Blanchette is luminous and wonderful. Fiennes pushes at times, going right up to the edge and occasionally over it with his tics and quirks, but he's ultimately very deeply effecting.
A strange mix of tones, comic, romantic; it behaves both like an epic and a parody of one. But it has never failed to move me, and it's full of moments where the beautiful imagery dances so well with Thomas Newman's delicate score that I get a shiver.
Two eccentrics, one the rich owner of a glass-works (Cate Blanchette), and one an emotionally damaged and physically fragile young minister (Ralph Fiennes) are united in friendship, and eventually romance by their obsession with gambling.
Blanchette is luminous and wonderful. Fiennes pushes at times, going right up to the edge and occasionally over it with his tics and quirks, but he's ultimately very deeply effecting.
A strange mix of tones, comic, romantic; it behaves both like an epic and a parody of one. But it has never failed to move me, and it's full of moments where the beautiful imagery dances so well with Thomas Newman's delicate score that I get a shiver.