Salomé ***
Dir: Al Pacino. With: Al Pacino, Jessica
Chastain, Kevin Anderson. 81 mins. Cert: 15.
This Sunday
cinemagoers can catch a double-bill that emerges from Al Pacino’s late-blooming
obsession with Wilde’s tale of transgressive sexuality. The main feature
records the play’s 2006 L.A. staging: hardly standard live-event fare, it’s
closer to Mike Figgis or Michael Almereyda’s experiments in giving perilously
archaic texts a scholarly redesign, shot by Miss
Julie’s Benoît
Delhomme in
dynamic close-ups that capture the players thinking their way through Wilde’s
tricky, arguably misogynist scenario. A pre-stardom Jessica Chastain makes Salomé a tragically self-assured headhunter, punished for knowing exactly what
she wants; she even aces her potentially ridiculous big dance, which – as
modern mores dictate – involves far fewer than seven veils and moves apparently
inspired by Shakira. Against her, Pacino’s vulgar, ethnically indeterminate
Herod furnishes this banquet with easily digested ham: if he can’t quite bring
all of Wilde’s often florid imagery into focus, he’s given it a good shout –
literally so, in places.
Salomé screens with Wilde Salomé, and a Pacino-Stephen Fry Q&A, in selected cinemas this Sunday.
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