EXCLUSIVE: The Tudors star will play a Jewish diplomat who gets into a passionate affair with a married Swiss woman, played by Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova (Clash of the Titans), on the eve of the Second World War. Marianne Faithfull also appears. First-time director Glenio Bonder starts filming October 25 on location in Geneva, Switzerland and then in Italy. James Dearden (Fatal Attraction) and Vincenzo Cerami (Life Is Beautiful) have written the script, based on Albert Cohen’s bestselling French novel. Bonder is a commercials director whose clients include Calvin Klein and British Airways. Thierry de Navacelle, Jimmy de Brabant (co-producer Girl With a Pearl Earring), with Jean Luc Van Damme (Goodbye Bafana) co-producing. Stealth Media Group, the Los Angeles and Brighton-based sales agency, is handling international distribution.


Oy gevalt…
The original novel is 850 pages long, consisting mostly in inner monologues. Writer Albert Cohen refused for decades to allow a paperback edition and now the right owners have signed to do a Euro-pudding sub-Hollywood adaptation?
Sounds very sexy. Sounds perfect for Rhys Meyers
Sub-Hollywood adaptation? The further they move from Hollywood adaptations the better in my opinion. What a great pair of screenwriters.
It’s far from being the first announcement about an adaptation. Five years ago, it was supposed to be shot with Olivier Martinez (Unfaithful) and either Leonor Walting (Talk To Her) or Ludivine Sagnier (Swimming Pool). So, I guess they’ll make the movie whenever two leads stay attached to the project more than a couple of months.
If you have read the novel, you know there’s no way taking the guy who wrote “Fatal Attraction” and the guy who co-writers Roberto Benigni’s movies can work on such an adaptation. Getting Rhys-Meyers as Solal, who is the epitome of suave, and a lingerie supermodel for Ariane, who is a Calvinist Swiss aristocrat, is also quite dubious.
Who’s the production company?
Let’s hope there’s lots of full frontal male nudity in it by Rhys-Meyers. I’m sure his package will give his career a “big boost”. HA!
Sounds so intresting. Can’t wait for this!
Thanks much for this, Nikki!
With Jonny on board (a more possible mission) one that actually requires his “special” talents,
this camper can now go pitch my happy tent.
Rhys Meyers has helmed three miniseries (Gormenghast, Magnificent Ambersons and Elvis)
and spent four seasons convincing a lusting lot that corpulent Henry8 was a svelte coverboy.
A sweeping 850 page allegory is not beyond his skill or ambition, as for internal monologues,
Jonny has a knack for turning the insides out.
And full frontal nudity? Always welcome it, but factually, he’s already been there done that.
By the time he was twenty, adjusting slightly for inflation, we’d seen…every square inch…
of Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
Sounds like the perfect movie for Jonathan. I’m looking forward to it.