Widow of Saint Pierre, The Review

The year is 1849 and on the French controlled island of Saint Pierre there`s a lot of speculation about the wife of the captain in charge of the small military unit. She seems too sophisticated for this backwater, but the Captain is devoted to her and she to him. When a local fisherman, Neel, is convicted of a particularly pointless murder, he`s sentenced to die on the guillotine, or the `widow` as it was commonly known at the time. But there is no widow on the island; one has to be brought in specially for the execution, and that takes time. Meanwhile, Neel goes to work for the Captain`s wife, but the wheels of justice keep turning Patrice Leconte inherited this project, based on true events, from Alain Corneau, who was to have been its original director, and he brings to it all his visual sophistication and irony. It`s an intriguing story on a great many levels, calmly and beautifully told. The casting of Yugoslav director Emir Kusturica as the murderer was a masterstroke - he`s tremendously effective as this ignorant, brutal and yet strangely tender man. The watchful underplaying of Juliette Binoche and, especially, Daniel Auteuil, plus the impressive widescreen photography by Eduardo Serra, lend dignity to this strange and tragic story.