THE HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF (63)

Directed by: Jean-Paul Rappeneau

Starring: Olivier Martinez, Juliette Binoche

The Pitch: In 19th-century France, a young Italian officer and a beautiful Marquise wander through a land ravaged by cholera.

Theo Sez: Oddly enough, a generally much better movie than this director's previous stab at period romance, the far more acclaimed (and over-rated) CYRANO. It's darker and tangier, the intervening influence of QUEEN MARGOT especially evident in the visceral scenes of death and disease - a sharp reminder that pre-modern life wasn't all costume balls and frilly dresses. It's also, unexpectedly, a harrowing picture of a country in the grip of plague, terror leading to vicious paranoia as humanity struggles to survive (it's a shame they couldn't have called it LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA!) and allowing for some memorably moody images - the cat on the edge of the gabled roof, looking down as circling crows flood the sky overhead, is my personal favourite. The plot, however, is something else again - a road movie, which is fine per se but seems somehow inappropriate in this (clearly expensive) context of grand, sweeping passions. One couldn't imagine a comparably "big" American movie with such a rambling, picaresque narrative, wandering so aimlessly or so unconcerned about building emotional force. Though, alas, one could imagine it as so strangely sexless - a trait so un-Frenchlike one almost wonders if it's not deliberate, and the film not readable (with its vision of a paranoid Establishment persecuting the victims of a contagious disease, transmitted through contact) as an oblique metaphor for AIDS.