The Guardian
Friday January 17, 2003
By Rob Mackie

Chen Kaige's first western film imitates the sort of early Hollywood melodrama in which a fluffy-brained heroine falls for an overwhelming macho man and discovers that, gulp, he might be a bit dangerous. With two insulting stereotypes in lead roles, this is difficult to do convincingly as a period movie, but plonking it down in modern-day London turns it into a parody that's much funnier than most official spoofs.

Heather Graham is the American whose eyes meet those of Joseph Fiennes at a zebra crossing. He turns out be a famous mountaineer doing a signing in a bookshop over the road. They knob rather a lot wordlessly, in a Last Tango sort of way. She leaves her dull boyfriend ("I buy your fucking tube tickets for you," is his exasperated response - one of many deeply odd lines). An instant marriage ensues.

Amid sudden snowstorms at key moments and Bernard Herrmann-style music, she realises - from his near-murder of a mugger and liking for auto-asphyxiation - that she is in danger and masquerades as a Guardian journalist to gain information (horn-rimmed specs and a big notepad - just like the rest of us). Apparently key scenes often lead nowhere, while the plot and acting spiral out of control. "I suppose a girl like me couldn't live at that altitude," Graham concludes. The chances of a more ludicrous film being made this year are, I fear, slim.