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The Roman Spring of Mrs. StoneRating:
Release Date: 23 March, 2004 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $12.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: Complete Cast (7 total) |
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone Reviews
A Remake That Does The Material Justice
I've always enjoyed the 1961 Vivien Leigh film of this Tennessee Williams work, and so was happy to discover how well this version was done. Helen Mirren, Olivier Martinez and Anne Bancroft do the material justice. Aging Broadway actress (Mirren), fresh from a poorly-received-conceived production in New York, goes with rich, adoring husband to Italy. He dies. She stays on. She meets Bancroft, a crusty lady who sets up lonely females with young Italian men on the make. Bancroft does a wonderful job with this part made famous by Lotte Lenya. Her scenery chewing is always top-drawer and appropriate. (It's hard to believe we've just lost this great actress, who always put so much fire in her performances without ever losing sight of the characters she played.) So, Mirren's obsession with gigolo Martinez plays its sad course, leaving us with the same ambiguous ending of the 1961 version. (How one interprets the ending is probably a good indicator of whether one is a rose-colored-glasses romantic or a down-and-dirty pessimist.) One book on Williams suggests a parallel between Karen Stone and Williams himself, who apparently spent some time in Italy after his early Broadway success and had a romantic fling with a local Italian. Be that as it may, the remake has one thing going for it that the original did not: Olivier Martinez, who is infinitely more believable as an Italian gigolo than the handsome-but-not-very-believable-as-an-Italian Warren Beatty. And Mirren: fearless to let her age show through at every turn, juxtiposed against the firm flesh of the young Martinez. That's what gives her performance the real punch. This film is excellent entertainment in the hands of a cast of real pros.
The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone
The storyline is very boring and monotonus, but the scenes with Olivier Martinez are pretty hot. If you like Olivier Martinez, you will probably find more than one reason to watch it. This movie is along the lines of Unfaithful, which Olivier Martinez was in too. You might as well fast forward or skip the scenes without Olivier Martinez in them--he's what makes this movie watchable. If you liked the movie Unfaithful, I have a hard time believing you wouldn't be able to muddle through this movie. I gave three stars simply because Olivier is so sexy in this movie.
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