(2007; English and untranslated Japanese) Pretty photography - opening scene of steaming water, snow surrounding a natural pool, black hair against naked back of a Japanese woman - and piano music permeate director François Gerard's adaptation (screenplay co-written with Michael Golding) of Alessandro Barrico's novel, delivering a completely unexpected ending. Unfortunately, much of what occurs in between lacks conviction, depth of feeling, or authenticity.

On leave from the French army in 1862, Hervé Joncour (Michael Pitt, looking much like Leonardo de Caprio) falls in love at the sight of Helene (Keira Knightly), unable to put off his obsession for her.

After making repairs to the old silk mill, Baron Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) tells Mayor Joncour that "money, man's stuff," comes from making women's stuff. Soon after reviving the production of silk, Baldabiou asks the mayor's son Hervé to make a trip to Egypt to obtain fresh, healthy silkworm eggs because a disease has spread throughout Europe as far as Turkey killing silkworms; before departing for a trek of nearly two months, Hervé weds Helene.

Upon his return with the eggs, he finds Helene, who teaches school, envious of her neighbor Beatrice's hatching a boy from her womb and desirous of her own child. These eggs as well, announces Baldabiou, have been infected with Pebrine; another far more arduous journey is necessary to purchase eggs from Japan. Hesitant to leave his wife for what would be months on a dangerous mission - no Western has been known to have penetrated the inland - Hervé accepts Helene's words that this is "better than fighting some stupid war."

Traveling through Europe, across Russia, along the Chinese border to Vladivostok, Hervé boards a smuggler's ship, donning a disguise, to reach the port of Sakata, which he finds "strange and haunting"; from there he relies on the baron's guides, who blindfold him in the mountains, to reach the village of his destination.

A warlord, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho), a closed and secretive man who speaks English (which must be understood to be French), informs Hervé ("I am the man you see before you," explaining his personal history, "that's all.") that he's aware of the Frenchman's having paid fake gold for fish eggs: "When you leave here, you will have what you want." Taking with him the silkworm eggs he sought, paid for with genuine gold, Hervé exits the Orient, leaving behind a piece of his heart for Jubei's concubine (Sei Ashina).

Back in France Hervé harvests great wealth from his success. When Beatrice's husband ceases speaking - he never talked of why he stopped talking - and leaves her, Hervé hires her to assist Helene with chores; Beatrice's boy Ludovic becomes something like an adopted son.

On his second visit to Japan, the villagers treat Hervé not as a stranger but as one who belongs among them; in addition to the silkworm eggs, he has been drawn back by the mystique of the concubine. A Dutch gun trader named Schuyler cautions Hervé not to be fooled by Hara's seeming kindness: "Trade fast, leave as soon as you can." He also says that the concubine is "not Japanese."

Revealing to Helene only the tale of a Chinese emperor's third wife's discovery of the secret of silk, Hervé travels to a brothel in Lyons where Madame Blanche (Miki Nakatani), who is Japanese, translates a message the concubine had given him: "Come back or I shall die." Madame Blanche advises him: "Forget about her. She won't die, and you know it." At home Helene is frustrated after two years with her barrenness.

Pasteur has devised a method of separating healthy silkworm eggs from those diseased, Baldabiou explains when Hervé requests permission for a third venture to Japan, making another trip unnecessary; besides, the political situation has become very risky in Japan with uprisings and revolution. Nevertheless, the baron provides support for Hervé who encounters rebellion and the village in ruins; Jubei orders him to leave and never return.

A month late in returning to France, the millions of eggs he brings back have all hatched and died, leaving the town without employment for most of its residents; Hervé overcomes his grieve of failure by hiring everyone able-bodied to create the garden he'd promised Helene. His satisfaction with his life is disturbed when a letter from Japan arrives; again he goes to Lyons for translation. Madame Blanche reads the beautiful words, asking Hervé to promise never to return: their moment together has been preserved forever.

With the opening of the Suez Canal, a voyage to Japan has been reduced to twenty days; the baron departs the village, having accomplished a near impossible feat he'd set for himself. When Hervé next seeks Madame Blanche in Lyons, he's told she has moved to Paris, where he eventually discovers her residence and receives from her an astonishing revelation. "What we were meant to do, we have done."

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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