Branagh's Bold "Labour" of Love
Daily Variety, February 14 2000
by Derek Elley
``Love's Labour's Lost'' is a
luscious labor of love. As if to prove the two extremes of his
affection for the Bard, Kenneth Branagh has followed his four-hour,
belt-and-braces version of ``Hamlet'' with one of the most audacious
adaptations of Will's works, hacked down into a faux, old-style
Hollywood musical and given the handle ``A Romantic Musical Comedy.''
Textual purists are likely to
flutter their hands in horror, but anyone with an open mind and
a hankering for the simple pleasures of Tinseltown's Golden Age
will be rewarded with 90-odd minutes of often silly, frequently
charming and always honest entertainment. Extremely smart marketing
will be needed to overcome negative reviews by high-minded crix
and to sell the concept as a fun, slightly campy entertainment
to the younger crowd. Despite the movie's formidable intelligence
and invention, modest returns look more likely in today's high-tech
market.
Pic poses a massive marketing
problem because there are simply no precedents in living memory
for such a picture. Though adaptations of Shakespeare's plays
tumbled out during the '90s, most were targeted at the youth
market, either through modern settings or as star-driven vehicles.
By re-casting ``Lost'' as a traditional Hollywood musical --
a form that effectively died out over 30 years ago -- Branagh
has raised the stakes even higher, recalling (for those with
long memories) Peter Bogdanovich's 1975 box office flop ``At
Long Last Love.''
Branagh has done everything within
his power to make things easy for a modern audience. The original
text has been hacked back to almost nothing, and the plot massively
simplified; the 10 musical numbers come fast and frequent; and
the whole thing is packaged as upbeat, widescreen entertainment
that doesn't have an ounce of spare flesh in its trim 93 minutes.
The concept of melding the Hollywood
musical (never noted for its historical accuracy or believable
plots) with one of the Bard's fluffiest and most verbally dexterous
romps is a clever one. Where Branagh takes his biggest risk is
in retaining rather than modernizing what's left of the original
dialogue, which still takes considerable concentration to follow,
in between the highly hummable classics by Gershwin, Kern, Porter
and Berlin.
Plot is pure frippery. The King
of Navarre (Alessandro Nivola) has retired to the country with
his three friends (Branagh, Matthew Lillard, Adrian Lester) to
pursue the intellectual life away from the distractions of beautiful
women. But their resolve is soon put to the test when the Princess
of France (Alicia Silverstone) and her three companions (Natascha
McElhone, Carmen Ejogo, Emily Mortimer) pay the King a visit.
Milling around on the outskirts
of the plot are various eccentric characters, including a horny
Spanish nobleman, Don Armado (Timothy Spall); Costard (Nathan
Lane), a vaudeville clown; a police constable, Dull (Jimmy Yuill);
country wench Jaquenetta (Stefania Rocca); a curate (Richard
Briers); and pedantic teacher (Geraldine McEwan, in a part that
was originally male).
Branagh sets the whole thing
in September 1939, as war clouds gather over Europe and a privileged
gentry enjoys an aimless existence. Interspersed through the
action, and conveniently summarizing huge chunks of plot, are
B&W, fake-scratchy newsreels, with a plummy English voice
(Branagh again) putting a jocular gloss on outside events.
Nothing about the setting or
characters makes the remotest sense in historical or cultural
terms, and the pic (shot at Shepperton Studios in England) aims
for a kind of fairy-tale mishmash that's as artificial as an
old RKO or MGM musical, or any of Josef von Sternberg's extravagances.
And even though the setting is the eve of WWII, the picture draws
on and evokes the look of musicals from the early '30s (Busby
Berkeley, Fred Astaire) to the late '50s (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra),
with even nonmusical refs (``Casablanca'') thrown in for good
measure.
The surprise is that none of
this matters. Most importantly, Branagh clearly knows his musicals
and abides by the well-tested rules that made the classics classics.
Sets are relatively few (a library, courtyard, riverside front,
garden) and evoke similar ones from past tuners; most dance numbers
employ long takes, with the full length of the dancer's body
visible; and segues from dialogue into songs are musically seamless
and psychologically apt.
When les girls arrive at night
by boat, in a magical sequence of color-coded dresses and Chinese
lanterns, they play coy with the men via Kern's ``I Won't Dance.''
When Berowne (Branagh) lectures his pals on the marvels of love,
he slips into Berlin's ``Cheek to Cheek.'' And when the four
pairs are forced to part temporarily at the end, Gershwin's ``They
Can't Take That Away From Me'' provides the musical grouting.
All numbers are kept short and brief, never taking over the picture.
The overall effect is knowing
and joyful at the same time, aided by perfs from the whole cast
that are free of pretentiousness and have a superior stock-company
glee. Stuart Hopps' choreography artfully disguises the fact
that only Lester can really dance; and vocal weaknesses by some
in the cast (Ejogo, Silverstone, Branagh) are fleeting. Apart
from a couple of intentionally tricky sequences -- a Busby Berkeley
parody as the girls wake up to Berlin's ``No Strings (I'm Fancy
Free)'' and a steamy fantasy ballet to ``Let's Face the Music
and Dance'' -- editing by Neil and Dan Farrell is light of touch.
There's scarcely a weak link
in the mixed-accent, Anglo-American cast, with only Ejogo, Mortimer
and Lillard failing to register strongly, more from shortage
of screen time than lack of acting smarts. Branagh comes over
as remarkably fresh and light, without hogging the spotlight;
Nivola makes a handsome and commanding king, and, most surprising
of all, Silverstone holds her own in a sporty performance as
the young queen, delivering the goods in a major final speech
opposite Branagh. Of the queen's companions, McElhone is strongest,
while Spall turns in a show-stopping comic term as a linguistically
challenged Spanish lech and Lane provides vaudevillian bounce
throughout.
Remaining tech credits are of
a high order, with Patrick Doyle's underscoring a major assist
in mood and tone, especially in the final reels. In German-subtitled
print caught, Alex Thomson's Panavision widescreen lensing was,
however, often less than ideally sharp outside closeups.
King ............... Alessandro
Nivola
Princess ........... Alicia Silverstone
Rosaline ........... Natascha
McElhone
Berowne ............ Kenneth
Branagh
Maria .............. Carmen Ejogo
Longaville ......... Matthew
Lillard
Dumaine ............ Adrian Lester
Katherine .......... Emily Mortimer
Nathaniel .......... Richard
Briers
Holofernia ......... Geraldine
McEwan
Jaquenetta ......... Stefania
Rocca
Dull ............... Jimmy Yuill
Costard ............ Nathan Lane
Don Armado ......... Timothy
Spall
Moth ............... Anthony
O'Donnell
Mercade ............ Daniel Hill
Boyet .............. Richard
Clifford
A Pathe Pictures (in U.K.)/Miramax
(in U.S.) release of an Intermedia Films and Pathe Pictures presentation,
in association with the Arts Council of England, Le Studio Canal
Plus and Miramax Films, of a Shakespeare Film Co. production.
(International sales: Intermedia, London.) Produced by David
Barron, Kenneth Branagh. Executive producers, Guy East, Nigel
Sinclair, Alexis Lloyd, Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein.
Directed, written by Kenneth
Branagh, based on the play by William Shakespeare. Camera (Technicolor
London prints; Panavision widescreen), Alex Thomson; editors,
Neil Farrell, Dan Farrell; music, Patrick Doyle; music producer,
Maggie Rodford; production designer, Tim Harvey; supervising
art director, Mark Raggett; costume designer, Anna Buruma; sound
(Dolby Digital), Peter Glossop; choreographer, Stuart Hopps;
associate producers, Rick Schwartz, Andrea Calderwood; assistant
directors, Simon Moseley, David Gilchrist; casting, Randi Hiller,
Nina Gold. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (noncompeting), Feb.
14, 2000.
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