Lasse Hallström is the best example of how Hollywood can spoil a good European cinematographer. He started off his career in his native Sweden, filming and later directing delightful and warm movies including beautiful and surreal My Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund) and utterly enchanting The Children of Bullerby Village (Alla vi barn i Bullerbyn). After moving to America he still manages to add a little bit of charm and intelligence to some of his movies (vide: What's Eating Gilbert Grape), but most of the time his films lack in any kind of magic and, even though they are calculated to move the audience, leave us rather indifferent and bored.

It came as a surprise that he has chosen Casanova as the main character of his new film. It's not everyday that a film director from cold Scandinavia, settled in the US, wants to reinvent the legend of the Italian master of seduction. Of course, he's not the first one to make an attempt on the filming the story of Giacomo Casanova. His most famous predecessor was Federico Fellini; his baroque drama features an outstanding performance from Donald Sutherland, who plays the famous libertine like he is one. Comparing Fellini's Casanova with the one from Hallstrom is pointless, because Hallstrom's version is supposed to do what Hollywood knows best: entertain.

So here we have a light comedy about a very busy lover, Giacomo Casanova (played by Australian actor Heath Ledger), who falls in love with Venetian beauty Francesca Bruni (Sienna Miller), who also happens to be the author of feminist pamphlets that are written against men like Casanova. He can't let her know who he is, so he starts a carnival of mistaken identities that are really hard to follow. It gets even more complicated when both Francesca and Casanova are to face the Church inquisitors, led by Pucci (Jeremy Irons - amusing like you would never expect). Hallstrom gives us a comedy of errors with a bit of hide and seek to please us and make us laugh. The ending is just the most silly and predictable deus ex machina that has been ever seen in a film for grown-ups.

Unfortunately, Hallstrom fails even as an entertainer; his film is like the 1970s Musketeers, but without its charm and lightness. All that's left are twists of the plot, never-ending chases, and a few duels; that's not enough to make a good film. Hallstrom also seems to forget the beauty of Venice; it is hard to miss, but in Casanova the floating city is more like a living postcard than a fascinating place of flesh and blood.

Casanova is not attempting to be any kind of historical or literal account of the libertine's life; in trying to make it only for laughs, Hallstrom has underappreciated his hero. In his version Casanova is just a charmer with blue eyes; this doesn't do any justice to the legendary lover. If we were more serious we could say that this film only insults Casanova. It insults the legend the way the great Italian film artist Pier Paolo Pasolini insulted de Sade when he filmed Salo. In a similar way to Hallstrom, Passolini built his film mostly from clichés and anecdotes from de Sade's work, forgetting that Marquis was a genius. Halstrom is not Passolini. His failure is on a smaller scale because he has not had ambition enough to film anything more than a Hollywood movie. And, judging by his bland and soulless "achievements", he will never leave his mainstream path to risk being an artist.

Rated 12 A (see IFCO website for details)
Casanova is released nationwide on 17th February 2006.
Casanova - Official website