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Roseanna's Grave / For Roseanna (12)
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| Tookey's Rating |
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4
/10 |
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| Average Rating |
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5.33
/10 |
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| Starring |
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Marcello .......... Jean Reno, Roseanna .......... Mercedes Ruehl, Cecilia ........... Polly Walker
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| Full Cast > |
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Directed by:
Paul Weiland
Written by:
Saul Turteltaub
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| Released: |
1996 |
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| Genre: |
DRAMA
ROMANCE
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
GB |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
97 |
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A simple soul (Jean Reno) is obsessed with his desire for his dying wife (Mercedes Ruehl) to have one of the last three burial sites in their Italian village. This brings him into conflict with the local landowner (Luigi Diberti) who won’t sell the church a field, so that it can extend its graveyard. Meanwhile, the landowners’s lawyer nephew (played by the late Mark Frankel) is chatting up our hero’s sister-in-law (Polly Walker). |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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| Roseanna’s Grave looks like a lot of genuinely Italian films - golden, nostalgic, parochial - and attempts to exude the gentle innocence which made art-house hits of Il Postino and Cinema Paradiso. The best thing about the movie is the loving relationship at the centre; it’s beautifully played by Reno and Ruehl, and it makes a pleasant change to see a happy marriage in the cinema. But Ruehl’s illness is one of those only-in-Hollywood diseases that leave you looking lovely right up to the minute you croak, and manifests itself in an occasional, delicate cough. Reno’s behaviour towards others isn’t nearly as cute as it’s supposed to be. It strays into bad taste, notably when he tries to convince the relatives of a comatose man that he’s still able to communicate, so he won’t have his life-support machine turned off and take up precious grave-space. There’s a silly, gangster sub-plot which never convinces, and Trevor Jones’s score is horribly over-emphatic troughout. Saul Turteltaub’s script isn’t as bad as the one for Weiland’s first feature film, City Slickers II , but it’s no more plausible. Turteltaub creates sitcom characters and then expects us to believe in them when they start playing melodrama. The final twist is meant to be an audience-pleaser. Instead, it looks like a writer’s last-gasp attempt at a feelgood ending. It doesn’t carry conviction for a second, and begs far too many questions - practical, medical and ethical. Some people will enjoy this undemanding movie for its gentleness and sentimental view of Italian life, and will go home whistling the landscapes (ably photographed by Henry Braham). Its problem is that, though it tries to have the charm of a delicious open-air meal in Umbria, really it has the oiliness of an East End waiter trying to serve up tepid, dried-up pasta, with a fake Italian accent. | |
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