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Roseanna's
Grave
Director: Paul Weiland
Starring: Jean Reno, Mercedes Reuhl, Polly Walker
Running time: 98 minutes
Original UK Release: August, 1997
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Roseanna's Grave(1997) VHS
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Romantic
comedies are often summarily dismissed without being given
the slightest chance to prove themselves. The two-word description
in itself can even be enough to put many people off.
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But in 1997, an exquisitely enjoyable film (which came
and went almost without trace) briefly surfaced to restore
faith in the genre and prove that romance and laughter
can successfully inhabit the same stretch of celluloid.
Roseanna's Grave (aka For Roseanna) is admittedly a
love story at heart, but the central premise simply
cries knockabout farce and director Paul Weiland doesn't
disappoint.
Set
in a picture postcard Italian village (the real-life
hilltop town of Sermoneta), French actor Jean Reno stars
as café owner Marcello, a man on a mission. It
is his dying wife's (Mercedes Reuhl) last wish to be
buried in the village's ancient cemetery next to their
beloved daughter, but there are only three plots left,
and the law says you can't reserve one.
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So, and
this is where the movie's vicious streak of black comedy kicks
in, Reno embarks on a frantic death prevention campaign, taking
it upon himself to make sure that no harm comes to any of
the other villagers.
Yanking
cigarettes from people's mouths, visiting the dying in hospital,
directing traffic, concealing corpses, driving drunks home,
his unswerving dedication to his wife knows no bounds.
But Saul
Turteltaub's gloriously entertaining script also throws in
a number of quirky sub-plots. These include Reuhl insisting
that Reno marry her sexy sister (Polly Walker) when she eventually
snuffs it and Reno's run-in with bitter local landowner Capestro
(Luigi Diberti), who refuses to sell a plot to the church
so that the cemetery can be expanded.
Not to
mention the small matter of an ex-con kidnapper who's after
the cash he left with a bent banker and Walker being romanced
by, of all people, Capestro's lawyer nephew.
Marvellous
stuff, which twists and turns along paths both daffy and enchanting,
Weiland (who had previously directed City Slickers II and
worked on the Mr Bean TV series) playing the emotional card
by having you roaring with laughter one minute and roaring
with tears the next.
Yet the
director manages to stop short of falling into the sort of
cloying sentimentality trap that Hollywood so often plunges
into. OK, so the ending puts a stupid misty-eyed grin on your
face, but this is a film which is picturesque without being
cute and romantic without being slushy.
Weiland also infuses his film with a warm sensuality and a
slight fairy-tale quality, his decision to have the actors
speak in English with an Italian inflection somehow adding
to its whimsical charm.
The cast
is uniformly strong and in Reno, the movie is blessed with
a performer who displays an instinctive knack for comedy.
His fraught efforts to keep the whole village alive make for
classic farce, while he just falls short of tipping a wink
to the camera when he tells Reuhl that he doesn't want to
go to France because: "It's full of French people, why
put ourselves through that?"
Laced with a distinctly morbid sense of humour (the corpse-defrosting
scene is a classic), the film also boasts one of the most
spellbindingly beautiful opening sequences of recent years.
So all
in all, Roseanna's Grave is a rare gem, one of those seemingly
obscure movies that you can end up falling hopelessly in love
with.
David
Lichtneker
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