Every so often, the release schedule will serve audiences examples of twin films: movies with very similar subjects that come out only a few months to a year apart, and with similarly notable talent involved. Think Antz and A Bug’s Life or Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down.
When this happens with Hollywood studios, industry gossip leaves one cynical about just how coincidental these situations are. But with The Return, we have a legitimate case of synchronous movies that no one involved with the first film out of the gate could have predicted. Uberto Pasolini’s independent, international co-production premiered at festivals just before the announcement that Christopher Nolan’s next film would be an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, and now reaches UK cinemas while that big-budget, star-studded epic is being shot for a release next summer.
Handily, The Return is structured and styled in such a way as to not evaporate from memory once the Nolan blockbuster comes along. Only adapting the closing sections of the story, it follows Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) finally washing up on the shores of Ithaca after 20 years away, having struggled to return home after the ten-year Trojan War. The haggard and unrecognisable rightful king of this island goes incognito while assessing the new state of things. His wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) is a prisoner in her own palace, hounded by suitors to choose a new husband to take the throne.
Pasolini strips Homer’s poem of much mythology, instead patiently exploring the human drama of post-war trauma and regret. The results are sadly mixed. When Fiennes and Binoche are centred, both solo and eventually reunited, the emotional charge is electric. It’s when anyone else is the focus that the slow-burn approach to the material proves inert, with Charlie Plummer’s mannerisms as troubled son Telemachus proving especially ill-suited to the acting styles of his onscreen parents.
The Return was first seen at the Glasgow Film Festival. It will be released in cinemas on 11 April.
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