This film might at least have been easier to watch if we hadn't been stuck with Michael Pitt as Herve Joncour, as the so-called romantic leading man.
Pitt looked as if he had been sleeping under a bridge for the last 3 months. His hair was unwashed looking, and he had that stubble that few men have the looks to pull off - and Michael Pitt very definitely doesn't.
It could have at least been romantic, if virtually plot less, if we'd only had an attractive leading man.
That aside, the film does have some pretty shots of scenery as the character goes to Japan, goes to Japan, and oh yes, goes to Japan, on his endless quest for silk worm eggs, along with the hope of having an affair with a Japanese woman he meets there. This is a woman who just happens to belong to a rather dangerous looking Japanese man. Now that situation should have come to some kind of head, but it never really does.
Keira Knightley plays his wife, how they managed to get her to look that plain and that boring I don't know, because she is actually a lovely, interesting, young woman. In this role, she could cure somebody's insomnia.
This entire movie could be used in the treatment of insomnia.
1 star