Bel Canto review: Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe star in uneven hostage drama

Dir: Paul Weitz; Starring: Julianne Moore, Ken Watanabe, Sebastian Koch, Christopher Lambert. 15 cert, 101 mins

Most hostage dramas work on a “desperate hours” principle. Tension ratchets up as audiences wait to see whether or not the captives will be rescued in time. In Bel Canto, the tension is barely there to start with. A siege at a South American embassy turns out to be an exercise in spiritual exploration and team bonding for both the hostages and their captors. They sing together, play football and chess, fall in love and eventually come to relish the chance to keep the big, bad outside world at bay. It’s a very strange premise for a movie. This is Stockholm syndrome taken to new extremes.

Early on, Bel Canto seems to be shaping up as a film about endurance and survival in the face of armed terrorists. Then it turns into a rambling character study. The problem director and co-writer Paul Weitz faces in adapting Ann Pratchett’s award winning novel for the screen is in combining such different elements. One moment, the film is a thriller. The next, it risks turning into a workshop on mindfulness and tolerance.

Julianne Moore stars as Roxanne Cross, a celebrated opera singer who, against her own instincts, has accepted a small fortune to perform at a private party being thrown for a Japanese industrialist. Katsumi Hosokawa (Ken Watanabe) adores opera and idolises Roxanne. He doesn’t really want to open a new factory in this impoverished Latin American police state but if Roxanne sings a few arias in his honour, his mind might be changed.

“It’s opera, so, in the end, everybody dies,” Roxanne blithely tells her Japanese admirer of the story behind the music she is performing. She could just as well be predicting the likely course of the narrative here.

Katsumi doesn’t speak fluent English or Spanish. This means he relies on his interpreter. The mix of languages spoken slows down the narrative. We are never told precisely where in South America we are. (Peru seems the most likely guess). Nor is it revealed what the terrorists are fighting for. They’ve come to kill the President and want their comrades released from jail but their ideology isn’t even touched on.

Real-life opera diva Renée Fleming is doing the singing, to which Moore mimes with admirable gusto. Fleming has a beautiful voice, which enraptures the terrorists and their captives alike.

Moore is a brilliant actress but this isn’t one of her more commanding performances. She plays the opera singer as a glamorous but grounded woman, who prefers the company of her captors to that of the corrupt politicians attending her soirée. She likes her luxuries but she is very democratic in her behaviour. She tries her hand at first aid and is as ready to give lessons to one of the terrorists as to perform for the President.

Watanabe’s Japanese businessman is a contradictory figure. He clearly has a streak of ruthlessness – he wouldn’t be such a powerful figure otherwise. However, in Roxanne’s presence, he becomes very sentimental and self-effacing.

Every so often, a go-between (Sebastian Koch) who works for the Red Cross but also has secret government connections, visits the hostages. He is a charismatic figure who develops an immediate rapport with the soulful rebel leader Benjamin (Tenoch Huerta) and tries to negotiate a deal which will save everyone’s lives.

Midway through, there is a bizarre scene which plays like something out of one of Luis Buñuel’s surrealist fables about the decadent bourgeoisie in which the rebels and their captives sit down for a lavish, Last Supper-style dinner together. The filmmakers aren’t satirising the characters but celebrating their camaraderie and common humanity. As they set up their own utopian community, any dramatic intensity quickly disappears. We get to see the French ambassador (Christopher Lambert) playing Scott Joplin ragtime music and the Russian trade delegate (Olek Krupa) talking about Chekhov and Tolstoy. Love blossoms in unexpected corners.

The film turns into a gentle, picaresque folk tale. We know that the idyllic mood can’t last. There are special forces soldiers lurking outside the embassy walls, waiting for the chance to massacre the terrorists/rebels. The President is looking to boost his popularity by ending the siege and doesn’t care at all about protecting innocent lives. He knows he can pin the blame on the rebels anyway. This provides the filmmakers with a dilemma they can’t really solve. If they resort to action movie clichés, they risk undermining the subtle, character-based story they have been trying to tell but if they avoid the violence, the drama will lack all credibility. In this particular siege, there can’t be any satisfactory ending. It’s little wonder the film ends on such a discordant note.

Bel Canto is released in UK cinemas on 26 April