Review of Winter's Tale (2014) by Filipeneto — 18 Mar 2018

I'm another person who saw the movie and did not read the book or never heard of it. In fact, I don't even know if it was translated to my mother tongue. But I liked the movie. He has an implicit idea that love is a magical feeling that overcomes barriers. We can find it in literature and almost all poetry, where impossible lovers abound, with more or less tragic consequences. So the idea of ​​this film is not new, but almost always works well in movies. Therefore, I think the script is good, although its far from being brilliant.

The major flaw of the script is that those, who don't know anything about the movie and start watching it, will thing, in the first minutes, which is seeing a period drama. These audiences will feel very confused at the sudden revelation of fantastic elements, something that they probably would not be waiting because the film was not immediately clear about that. I felt it the first time I saw, and I just really enjoyed it in the second time I saw it.

The main roles are embodied by Colin Farrell (as the good guy, Peter Lake), Jessica Brown Findlay (in the role of the young, rich and sick Beverly Penn) and Russell Crowe (as the evil Perly Soames). Will Smith also makes a small but important role, as the Judge, in a clear reference to the Devil. About the actors work, I think it was regular. The biggest applause goes to Crowe, who did a convincing job as a villain. Jessica Findlay never seemed me passionate enough, her character is almost as cold as the ice of winter scenery. She looked like a rich girl who want to escape her gilded cage and enjoy an adventure. Farrell, in turn, despite seemed more passionate, failed in interpretation. It seemed too kind to be a thief in search of redemption through love, and his acting was theatrical and inauthentic.

Anyway, the film is quite reasonable. Far from brilliance, it entertains the audience and bring us a beautiful love story in a fantasy film that, in a counter to gender itself, dispenses with most of the special effects to privilege the story. Not everything is good in this movie, but it's not necessarily a bad film.