30/08/2007

Today is Kenneth Branagh's big day at the Venice Film Festival : Sleuth [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (in competition), already greeted with applause by the press, is about to be presented to the public : after the accredited professionals' first reactions, the dark humour of Nobel Prize-winning Harold Pinter will unfold at tonight's world premiere.

For this new version of Joseph L. Mankiewicz' last film, the English playwright re-wrote the play by Anthony Shaffer which had inspired the original. Without betraying its spirit (it still tackles the merciless duel between a wealthy writer and a young actor in a growing swirl of set-ups and twists and turns), the new Sleuth includes several alterations : having been re-written by Pinter, it claims its autonomy, and its length completely differs from the prototype's.

In less than 90 minutes, Kenneth Branagh (on the Lido last year to present The Magic Flute [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), it condenses the over-two-hour-long original into a narrative which falls into three highly theatrical acts : in the first act, Jude Law (who also produced the movie) becomes the victim of Michael Caine, a cuckolded husband looking for revenge ; in act 2, Law has the upper-hand and does not lose it until the tragic twist at the end of the third part.

In 1972, this massacre game confronted Laurence Olivier and the same Michael Caine. The actor (who many people suspect is likely to win the Volpi Cup) now co-stars with Jude Law (hero of Alfie, revisited in 2004) in the role which was once his. The film is sharp, geometrical and cold, as is the high-tech design of the house where the whole plot unfolds, an 18th Century mansion whose walls hide futuristic rooms – and that is the last Russian doll in a kammerspiel where nothing is what it seems.

Sleuth, a UK/US coproduction, will be distributed in the UK by Paramount Pictures International. Sony Pictures Releasing will release it in Italy on November 9.

(Translated from Italian)