In Casanova, Disney’s new sex farce, Heath Ledger tackles—no, wait, let’s pause here. We need to let that sink. Roll the words around your brain for a bit: “Disney’s new sex farce.” It’s not a sentence I expected to write.
Anyway, in Casanova, Disney’s new sex farce, Heath Ledger tackles the role of Europe’s most celebrated lover. For whatever reason, I tried really hard to not like this movie. I’m not sure if it was because of the subject or because of the actor. Casanova has been put to film several times before (it is difficult to imagine that both Heath Ledger and Donald Sutherland have now played the same Rennaisance sex object) and never to much effect. On the other hand, Ledger’s mumbliness hasn’t ever much appealed to me and taking the role of Casanova following Brokeback Mountain has a certain feel of saying, “I’m not really a gay cowboy!”
Despite my resistance, Casanova won me over in the end and Ledger displayed more charisma than I thought him capable. The final result is not a great movie, but rather a fun one. Casanova is comedy with its eye on the adult audience, or at least the late teens, which is an improvement over the standard comedic target of 14-year-old boys.
Those of you familiar with the real-life story of Giacomo Casanova need not worry about having anything in the movie be repetitive. Other than in the high points of Casanova living in Venice under the protection of the Doge from Inquisitors anxious to see him punished, there is nothing in the movie that would be found in Casanova’s autobiography. In this fictional tale, Casanova has been sleeping his way around Venice society, though nobody other than the Church seems to care. Of course, since the Church’s Inquisition has the ability to execute those found undesirable, this is a sizable exception. Casanova is under the protection of the Doge (Venice’s king, essentially), but his patience is stretched thin and Casanova is told to get married to a respectable member of society to clear his record.
Casanova decides on Victoria (Natalie Dormer) which brings him into conflict with Giovanni Bruni (Charlie Cox) who already had designs on her. Casanova then meets and falls for (after already getting engaged) to Giovanni’s feminist sister Francesca (Sienna Miller). Unfortunately for him, he believes she has prominent philospher Bernardo Grudi as a secret lover in addition to being already promised to Genoa lard baron Lord Papprizio (Oliver Platt, further augmented with a fat suit). Thus begins a sequence of identity confusion and scamming that could easily have fallen flat on its face.
It doesn’t though, and the film’s carefree energy keeps it afloat over several logical pitfalls and narrative speedbumps. When, late in the film, Lord Papprizio says, “Let’s go to my barge, it’s by the water,” it is a test of how the audience is responding. It is a line that isn’t funny on its own, but relies on the collective mood, and at my screening it passed with flying colors.
Director Lasse Hallström has made a career of commercial relationship dramas and this is certainly the farthest he has gone towards comedy, at least in the United States. The humor isn’t going to have anybody rolling in the aisle but is rather more of a mood while keeping enough tension on the relationships to keep things interesting.
There are really only two soft spots in the movie. The special effects used to create the wide shots of 18th-century Venice are just off. To be fair, they seem intentionally so, as if creating an Impressionist image rather than a realist one, but they just don’t work. More importantly, Sienna Miller (best known for being cheated on by Jude Law) brings nothing of interest the movie. She’s good enough to not tear the whole thing down but whenever she’s the primary actor on screen things slow down a bit.
Ledger is wise to play it cool and just let it all swirl around him, looking good and giving justification to the idea that most every Venetian woman is willing to throw herself at his feet. Meanwhile, the heavy comedic lifting it left to Platt, Jeremy Irons (as the “pope’s most feared Inquisitor) and Omid Djalili as Casanova’s servant/co-conspirator.
Most parents will not want to take their pre-teen children to Casanova. While the language is clean, the situations and innuendo are heavy. For the most part the movie avoids overtly sexual situations (and with 30 seconds of editing would have none) but both incidents are as explicit as they could be while not actually showing anything. For older children, there probably isn’t anything in the film that they haven’t seen (or heard) many times before, but don’t assume that because it is a sex comedy from Disney that it is entirely tame.
Casanova is a Touchstone Pictures release.
Limited theatrical release beginning December 25.
Directed by Lasse Hallström
Screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher and Kimberly Simi
Rated R for some sexual content
Running time: 108 minutes
Alex’s Rating: 7 out of 10.
