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From The Killing Fields to Vatel - quite a time travel!

Roland Joffé, the director of the memorable "The Killing Fields" has decided to give us HIS rendition of life in the 17th century Paris.

He hires some luminaries: Gerard Depardieu and Uma Thurman. Too bad the old man Gerard is getting fatter every year, and by the 2000 (the year when the move was made) he is alreadly almost perfectly square.

I guess the director had a vision of exceeding the "Ridicule" and "Barry Lyndon" in its opulence, and that spells fatal flaw in the film. Sure, the interiors - and exteriors, for that matter - ARE beautiful... all that dirty green and gilding... except - they seem decidedly out of place in 1671. Why - most of them are from the later period.

But the fatal blow - tons of pun in that one - comes in the duel scene, where the participants all pull out what appears to be the middle-18th century smallswords. OK, OK, that was not the fatal one, as the truly fatal one is administered by Vatel himself and onto himself... and again, with an 18th century piece.

The plot... the acting... the directing... Ah, who cares, when Gerard is on the screen surrounded by the decadent beauties of all sorts - of which Uma is not the top one.





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    Topic - From The Killing Fields to Vatel - quite a time travel! - Victor Khomenko 11:35:00 01/06/03 (5)


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