The Movie
It's interesting in theory--Amy Foster (Rachael Weisz) is a servant girl whose personality is so withdrawn in her little cornish farming community that people think there's something wrong with her. A young man named Yanko (Vincent Perez), an immigrant from Russia, washes ashore from a shipwreck. Unable to speak the language and looking odd with his long hair and unusual manners, he's considered a "wild man." These two outcasts find each other, and a romance ensues that the community frowns upon.
In practice it just doesn't work. I agree with a user's comment from the Internet Movie Database: you mostly get the sense of how people perceive Amy and Yanko by what's being told, not by their performances. Amy looks like any shy girl, and Yanko seems like any foreigner who can't speak the language and doesn't know local custom. That the townspeople overreact to both of them makes them look more than just considerably cruel--it makes them all look downright stupid. Ian McKellan is good as Dr. Kennedy, but mostly because he's one of the only characters who seems to be paying attention to anything going on in the film. |
The Music
This sounds (to me, anyway) like a Barry score that's typical of his recent work--very heavily romantic, lush and very, very slow. I can't say that I really enjoy listening to the CD, but I thought it was great in the movie (which is what it meant for, anyway). There's a scene where Amy first meets Yanko when he's locked in a barn, when the farmer's family is scared of him. Amy sneaks in and tentatively cleans him up. This is where Barry's score shines--it gives the scene depth and warmth, and says things that are omitted from dialog. Other scenes with his music do the same--Barry knows how to compliment images with music. And it helps that the photography is excellent. It just happens to be yet another movie where the score and the technical level are expended on a poor script.
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