Film Review: Bel Canto

Pictured: Singing for water. Soprano Roxane Coss (Julianne Moore) is given a demand from guerillas in the siege drama 'Bel Canto'. Still courtesy of Vertigo Films (UK)

Early in the South America-set siege drama ‘Bel Canto’, soprano Roxane Coss (Julianne Moore) confesses that she only took the gig to perform for a Japanese industrialist, Mr Hosokawa (Ken Watanabe) for money. ‘I kept raising the amount in the hope that I would put them off,’ she confesses, crassly. ‘Finally, the money was too much to refuse.’ I wonder if the Oscar winning star of Still Alice made a similar decision. Moore is utterly unconvincing as an opera star. It isn’t the mouth movements that fail to convince. (Renee Fleming is credited as her vocal double.) You cannot see the physical effort below the chin to hit the high notes. The film, adapted from Ann Patchett’s 2001 novel by Anthony Weintraub and the director Paul Weitz (About A Boy, In Good Company, Little Fockers) doesn’t hit the high notes either. It’s a respectful adaptation, but not very good.

Roxane’s performance for Hosokawa is interrupted by a group of guerrillas who expected to find their country’s president in the audience. However, he chose to stay at home to watch his favourite telenovela. Whilst women, children, priests and the infirm are released, Roxane is not allowed to leave. Her Norwegian accompanist, Christopf (Thorbjørn Harr) is killed whilst going back for her. The guerrillas insist on the release of all political prisoners. The government doesn’t budge. Red Cross negotiator Messner (Sebastian Koch) plays shuttle diplomacy.

Much of the dialogue is not the English language; Weitz makes a credible lunge at verisimilitude. It opens in 1996 Japan with Hosokawa telling his teenage son, listening to loud, tuneless Megadeath ‘music’ that he will be overseas for a few days. The son responds with the Japanese equivalent of ‘whatever’. Hosokawa is a classical music enthusiast who had previously seen his favourite soprano, Coss in Vienna. This time he has a personal audience. The country’s trade department has hired Roxane in the hope that the gesture will persuade Hosokawa to build a factory there. But he has no intention of doing so. Being held hostage is a retribution for his vanity, but Roxane wants to share his guilt.

The most interesting aspect of the film, preserved from the novel, is that performers of high art don’t have the values that high culture ought to espouse. Coss is crass and undiplomatic. We expect her though to be as disciplined as an athlete. At no point in the film does Roxane practice, which would, in another circumstance, give her a means of surviving the ordeal.

Weitz also shows class distinctions amongst the guerrillas. Though one of their leaders is a teacher, at least two of the group have little education. Carmen (Maria Mercedes Coroy) asks translator Gen (Kyo Rase) to teach her to read. Another of the group performs an aria before escaping from the house to the trees. Roxane and others have to talk him down.

Although the guerrilla group is not formally identified, Patchett was inspired by the Peruvian Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, who held hundreds of high level diplomats, military and government officials hostage at the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru for 126 days between December 1996 and April 1997. It is quite possible that the real-life equivalent of Carmen would have been a Quechua speaker – Quechua was spoken by 13 per cent of the Peruvian population. Patchett certainly resolves the stand-off in the same way – no spoilers – though not without showing a bridge between built between captives and the group.

Spanish, Japanese, Quechua and English are spoken as the group deal with the cutting off of water supplies. Roxane has to sing for their restoration ‘to remind the government what’s at stake’. Interestingly, there is no representation from the US government outside.

The filmmakers don’t recreate the grisly aftermath of the Japanese embassy siege, with the severed heads of rebels being paraded on television. Instead, two relationships develop across cultural divides between Roxane and Hosokawa, Gen and Carmen.

It is just that Roxane doesn’t practice vocal exercises. Neither she nor Hosokawa emerge as characters. At its heart, ‘Bel Canto’ is an inter-racial love story, but the filmmakers prefer to show this as opposites drawn together through their loins.

There is one bright moment when Carmen teaches Gen to walk in step with him, slapping the Japanese translator’s leg. We also note the further physical decline of Christopher Lambert of Highlander fame, who as the French Ambassador looks much older than the 59 years old he was when shooting the film - he’s now 62.

Small moments such as the guerillas practicing their ‘final stand’ are also effective. However, there’s not much at the centre as if the filmmakers are afraid of attaching themselves to one governing idea. The film is an ensemble piece without flourishes. There is none of the high emotion of the operatic form.

‘Bel Canto’ is on limited release in the UK from Friday 26 April 2019