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Next to Game Of Thrones , Patrice Leconte’s WW1 spanning adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s novella is a bloodless outing for Richard Madden (aka Robb Stark). Madden is drawing-board stiff as Friedrich, personal secretary to a factory owner (Alan Rickman) who falls for the boss’s wife (Rebecca Hall).
Bodices remain stubbornly unripped as our romantics wrestle with desire: they lack chemistry and Leconte’s atypically dry direction never implies it. Gabriel Yared’s score works hard to rouse emotion but when the most exciting scene involves a rat, the erotic frisson clearly isn’t happening.
