Omnibus film along the lines of Tales of Manhattan or The Yellow Rolls-Royce, only instead of a coat or a car, the linking thread is a 17th-century musical instrument, passing through many hands on its way to a present-day auction house. There is a degree of suspense about who will get it in the end, and at what cost; and there is even a touch of the caper film about it. But the individual episodes, in Italian, German, French, English, Chinese, and again English, are slender to wispy; and the treatment of the wildly romantic premise is standoffishly muted. The image is downright dull. John Corigliano, a minor figure in contemporary classical music, an imperceptible figure in the whole panorama of it, composed the lightweight music; Joshua Bell performs the violin solos. With Samuel L. Jackson, Greta Scacchi, Jason Flemyng, Jean-Luc Bideau, Sylvia Chang, and Colm Feore; directed by François Girard. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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