Silk (2007)

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): In 19th-century France, a merchant named Baldabiou (played by Alfred Molina) has discovered a way to raise silkworms, thereby allowing him to manufacture silk garments to satisfy the needs of French society. The only problematic part of the entire process is transporting the silkworm eggs from Africa back to Europe. This is a difficult task even under the most favorable circumstances, so when the last crop of silkworms is wiped out by disease, Baldabiou decides to buy from Japan instead.

This time, Baldabiou will entrust the job to Hervé (Michael Pitt), a young military officer who recently married the lovely Hélène (Keira Knightley). Though Hervé isn’t particularly excited to leave Hélène so soon after their wedding, he is happy to have the opportunity to get into a lucrative trade so he can leave the army.

When Hervé arrives in Japan, he is enchanted by the exotic land — and by an unnamed young woman who is part of the local lord Jubei’s (Koji Yakusho) concubine (Sei Ashina). Hervé wants the woman, but ends up having sex with a different girl, who was provided by the concubine. The woman also gave Hervé a note, which he can’t read because it’s in Japanese.

Upon arriving back home in France, Hervé tries to take up with Hélène again, but he can’t get the Japanese woman off his mind. He takes the note to Madame Blanche (Miki Nakatani), the Japanese owner of a Paris brothel, to have it translated. It said, “Come back or I’ll die”, which makes Hervé even more obsessed. He does go back to Japan, but can’t find the woman again. Nevertheless, he doesn’t forget her.

Meanwhile, Hervé’s life with Hélène seems pretty mundane in comparison. They can’t have children, and Hélène’s health is failing, making her weaker and weaker all the time. When Hervé gets another, far more erotic letter from the Japanese woman, it’s all he can do to remain by Hélène’s side. It’s not until after she dies that Hervé learns the startling truth about her.

My Reaction: I generally like Keira Knightley, and wanted to see Silk just because she was in it. Unfortunately, the insufferable Hervé was the main character, which meant I had to spend most of the movie watching Michael Pitt try to act like he was pining away for a woman he saw ONE time. I mean, give me a friggin’ break here. Keira Knightley isn’t exactly an old hag, ya know? You’d think he’d choose to be happy with his wife, a woman he had an actual relationship with instead of someone whose name he didn’t even know.

And that was the basic problem with this movie. Viewers were asked to believe that the few hours Hervé spent with the Japanese woman could change his life forever, but we were given no good reasons to do so. We were supposed to take it on faith, which perhaps played out better in the original novel, but doesn’t work at all on screen. The rest of the plot — the silkworm trade and Hélène’s declining health — were all secondary to this imagined love affair.

Overall, I thought Silk was a dull, boring film with a highly flawed premise. I wanted to sit back and enjoy the beauty of the exotic scenes and nice score, and in this respect, the slow pace didn’t bother me at all. It was the story that stank and made the film virtually unwatchable. I give it 1 star out of 5.