Bel Canto (15)**
Dir: Paul Weitz
With: Julianne Moore, Ken Watanabe, Sebastian Koch
Runtime: 101 minutes
ODD one this. You can see why Mozart in the Jungle director Paul Weitz would be attracted to this tale of finding solace in music. There is a stellar cast, besides, in Julianne Moore, Ken Watanabe and Sebastian Koch (The Lives of Others), and the source material, Ann Patchett’s novel, is a best-seller. Yet what works on the page does not always translate well to the screen.
Bel Canto is set in an unnamed, impoverished South American country where the president has gone all out.including hiring a famous opera singer (Moore) to persuade a Japanese businessman (Watanabe) to build a factory locally. Guerrillas storm the event, taking hostages. Trying to mediate a settlement is Koch’s Red Cross negotiator. As days turn into weeks and months the international community of hostages and kidnappers find they have more in common than might appear.
Despite the star wattage on show, this is a creaky effort, with the fantasy elements of Patchett’s tale struggling to convince from the off.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here