James
Stewart is a reluctant imperialist. He and his brothers are sort of gentlemen, but
they hardly have a pound to their names. They are serving their military
service during the time of the British Raj, to earn enough money to buy a farm
in American. Stewart also happens to be Jay Fennel, a near future marine
biologist. The spitting image of each other, the two men are somehow connected
by destiny, the laws of physics, and a matched set of rings. Centuries pass,
but love remains a painful force to reckon with in Roland Joffé’s The Lovers (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Jay
Fennel and his wife Laura are ocean researchers, who get to use mega-expensive submersibles
to scour the ocean floor for shiny objects that might catch their eye—like say
a ring. When Laura gets excited by a potential find, she carelessly heads down
to the site, getting trapped beneath some debris. Manning-up, Fennel free-dives
down to rescue her, but without the proper decompressing, he comes back up
essentially brain dead. While his wife and doctors agonize over his condition,
the film flashes back to the Eighteenth Century.
Stewart
and his brother Charles are decidedly outsiders amongst the colonial
establishment. They still think they take their orders from King and
Parliament, but the governor makes it clear the British East India Company is
calling the shots. Based on the Company’s wink-and-a-nod encouragement, a coup
is staged within the Marantha royal family. Much to the new king’s frustration,
the beloved queen escapes thanks to her protector, Tulaja Naik, who assumes her
identity to further safeguard her security.
In
a case of good news-bad news, the queen’s party is to be escorted to Bombay (as
it then would have been called) by the Stewart Brothers. Once they arrive at
their destination, the queen will be little more than a hostage of the governor
and his cronies. However, the Stewarts are probably the only officers
resourceful enough to protect the Queen and her retainers from the army of assassins
following them.
The Lovers is a very odd
film. In many ways it is a throwback to 1940s exotic ports-of-call films, but with
a generous helping of New Age mysticism layered on top. It is sort of like Gunga Din crossed with Titanic, as mashed-up by Richard
Matheson, writing in his What Dreams May
Come-Somewhere in Time bag. Once known as Singularity, the film is supposedly structured around the
principles of physics, but that fact will not be immediately obvious to even
reasonably attentive viewers.
Frankly,
the Eighteenth Century storyline is rather appealingly old fashioned, even
though Josh Hartnett’s Scottish accent is almost as big an adventure as their
trek across the mountains. Still, he can swagger respectably and develops some
rather nice romantic chemistry with Bollywood superstar Bipasha Basu. Without
question, she is star of the film, shining in her considerable action sequences
and smoldering in her scenes of passion.