User Reviews

Because John Hannah and Rupes were in this, I figured I'd give it a go, even though it isn't to my usual taste. Oh dear, five minutes in, and I knew it was going to be baaaad. To begin my list of gripes, I'll write of the acting. To say it was bad isn't doing it justice. It was ATROCIOUS. Wooden, and devoid of expression, (both voice and facial expression were lacking), it was on to a terrible start. It was a bit like it had been dubbed, (and I really do think some of the actors' voices were changed) even though they were clearly speaking English. Of course, and actor is only as good as their script, and this too was woefully inadequate. Clunky, clichéd lines, and characters' picked straight out of a Victorian melodrama. All Rupert Everet needed was a mustache to twirl! And every soapy device in the book was used. Sister steals boyfriend, TICK, a father who abandoned his child nearly dies, cue emotional reunion, where the true meaning of family is discovered...and more, oh much more. Then there were the ballet segments. First, whomever wrote/directed this, clearly has no idea of how a ballet company is run. So didn't bother doing the research and guessed: wrongly. Even the Romeo and Juliet music was the wrong version. Prokofiev is the ballet version. Tchaikovsky's is more a symphony. It isn't a full length ballet. Finally, the child in it. He must be related to someone, because a worse child actor I haven't seen. It was like he read from cue cards, though at least he had the excuse of BEING a child and therefore inexperienced. How this ever got made is beyond me. Why I continued to watch is a bigger mystery. For goodness sake, there are so many talented writers, directors and actors out there. Use them, for all our sakes

I'm translating this for TV (have not finished yet) and although the story is OK, the acting is remarkably dull and uninspired - with the exception of 2 (two) actors. Even Rupert Everett exudes NO emotion whatsoever but at least he's off screen most of the time, and doesn't come off completely rookie when he does make an appearance. Pretty much everyone else sounds like this is their very first acting job so they're just petrified, and deal with their stage fright by reciting their lines with the enthusiasm of a terminally depressed Dalek.

The German actress playing Gemma (the younger daughter) clearly put a lot of effort into the accent. Sadly she overdid it, so more often than not, its preciousness was grating. Natalia Worner did a better job in that regard (and I can't fault a German actress playing a German character for sounding German once in a while). The thing is, acting that's so profoundly dead simply wouldn't allow for any preciousness.

I suspect that in the book, Rebeca Kendall (her character) is meant to be a dignified woman, calm and collected. Sadly, Worner's Rebeca comes across emotionally stunted instead, and that's only if you decide to force yourself to see her monotonous droning as realistic, and try to figure out what sort of state a human being must be in to behave like that. (Worner looks and sounds the same whether Rebeca's giving advice to her daughters, flirting with her husband, mourning his death, OR raging at his infidelity). Even if Rosamunde Pilcher did write the character as incapable of expressing emotion (it's quite possible), what's the excuse for what amounts to over 80% of the rest of the cast?

I have never seen Worner in anything else but I HAVE seen Everett and Hannah, and they are both perfectly good actors. I'm forced to assume the director had some really strange ideas s/he projected onto the whole cast, and I sympathize with them enormously. The only ones who appear to have resisted are the actors playing George and Anne Meriot, but that's only 2 out of too many.

2 stars for story, 0 stars for everything else.