Silk
Silk Image
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Metascore
39 out of 100

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 15 Critics What's this?

User Score
5.4 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 8 Ratings

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  • Starring: Keira Knightley, Michael Pitt
  • Summary: Based on the number one international bestselling novel by Alessandro Baricco, Silk is a sweeping romantic drama woven around a material of ethereal fragility: silkworm eggs. When the pébrine epidemic--the spotted silkworm disease that ravaged eggs from European hatcheries in the 1860s--spreead overseas, eggs from as far away as Africa and India became infected; thus, the entire European silk trade seemed doomed. To continue his lucrative trade, Baldabiou--a roguish French trader--decides to send young military officer Herve Joncour on a perilous mission to Japan, separating Herve for months on end from Helene, his lovely and devoted schoolteacher wife. Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal, Japan produced the finest silk in the world for thousands of years and was considered a dominion forbidden to foreigners--quite literally the opposite end of the world. It is here that Herve encounters the powerful and feared local baron, Hara Jubei, with whom he will trade for the precious silkworm eggs. And it is here, in a world unlike anything that Herve has experienced before, that he becomes entranced by the baron's concubine, a deeply mysterious girl of intoxicating beauty. Without speaking one another's language, they share a doomed, obsessive love. A film of painterly beauty and ravishing romance, Silk is a historically rapturous epic romance of east meets west. (Picturehouse) … Collapse

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 15
  3. Negative: 4 out of 15
  1. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    75
    As sensuous as its title, Silk is an exquisitely felt love story that unfolds as delicately as a blooming flower. And as slowly.
  2. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    58
    Sensual but profoundly silly, Silk is ultimately little more than softcore porn with arthouse trappings, a moony, dopily romantic "Red Shoe Diaries" variation for the NPR set.
  3. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    50
    Everything is brought together at the end in a flash of revelation that is spectacularly underwhelming.
  4. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    38
    By the end of Francois Gerard's plodding, uninvolving melodrama, his boredom will have nothing on yours.

See all 15 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. JohnN.
    10
    Although the man has a beautiful and loving wife awaiting his return, he becomes obsessed with the lovely young concubine of a powerful Japanese feudal baron. His choice, love or desire. However, in real life neither of these beauties would give the mayor's son the time of day because he's a lethargic, vacuous, sleepwalking, unkempt zombie. Fortunately, the gorgeous wife, concubine, prostitute and cinematography overcome this egregious miscasting and make the film a wise masterpiece.… Expand

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