St. Ives

ST. IVES

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Dolby Stereo

Loosely based on an unfinished work by Robert Louis Stevenson, this light-hearted romp through 19th century Europe attends the fortunes of a dashing French hussar (Jean-Marc Barr, the ineffably beautiful star of THE BIG BLUE, and a regular in the films of Lars von Trier) as he wines and wenches his way through the Napoleonic wars before being captured by the enemy and interned in a Scottish prison camp. There, he's befriended by a sympathetic warder (Richard E. Grant) who recognizes his status as a 'gentleman', and is helped to escape by a romantic young noblewoman (Anna Friel) and her idiosyncratic aunt (Miranda Richardson). Eventually, Barr stumbles on the scattered remnants of his long-lost family (Michael Gough is the benevolent grandfather, while Jason Isaacs plays the younger brother who would rather see Barr dead than share his inheritance), and is pursued across the English Channel by those who would either worship or destroy him.

Director Harry Hook (LORD OF THE FLIES) plays things low-key for the most part, which means this swashbuckling comic adventure isn't nearly as swashbuckling, comic or adventurous as Allan Cubitt's witty script suggests, but the period settings are a treat and the characters are nicely underplayed by a game cast (Barr is proud and genial, while Grant and Richardson steal the show as, respectively, an incompetent fop and a worldly woman who cultivate a boiling passion for one another, despite their strict adherence to the rules of etiquette, leading to some of the film's most hilarious sequences). Perhaps too restrained for its own good, the movie strikes a diplomatic balance between humor and drama, but there's enough of both to satisfy casual viewers and hard-boiled movie fans alike. Also known as ALL FOR LOVE.