Uncovered (1994) Reviews

• British/Spanish production based on Arturo Perez Reverte's novel , telling of a mystery hidden in an art masterpiece

  ma-cortes2015-05-14

  This is a 1994 British/Spanish/French co-production film titled ¨The Flandes panel¨ or ¨ Uncovered¨, starring Kate Beckinsale and John Wood, it is a cinematic adaptation of the bestseller novel about a mystery spanning from the 15th century to the present day . It deals with Julia (Kate Beckinsale) , an art restorer and evaluator living in Barcelona . While restoring an old painting showing two men and a woman playing chess , Julia discovers a text underneath the paint which reads "Quis Necavit Equitem", written in Latin (English: "Who killed the knight?"). The owner (Michael Gough) of the painting tells her that one of his forefathers was murdered , the painting might identify the killer . She consults a gypsy named Domenec (Behan) , a quiet local chess master , who reconstructs the game from the painting . When Julia's friends are killed she understands that there is more to it and with any piece she takes , somebody dies . With the help of a chess genius and her old friend as well as father-figure , an antiques dealer named César (John Wood) , Julia works to uncover the mystery of a 500-year-old murder . At the same time , however , Julia faces danger of her own ; as several people helping her along her search are also killed . Thrilling suspense movie packs thrills , violence , intriguing events , gruesome slaying , nudism and winds up into an astonishing finale . Passable whodunit in which a beautiful young girl discovers a painted-over message on a 1471 Flemish masterpiece called ¨The Chess Game¨, while a serial killer executes gruesome murders and subsequently the art restorer attempts to resolve it . Exciting and stirring development , though predictable , when starring finds that his fellows , friends and relatives are being murdered one by one . This is an acceptable thriller but contains several flaws and gaps , in fact there was trouble brewing on the set because of overages and creative concerns between the director , writer and the studio . It is based on a novel written by Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte in 1990 . Reverte is a Spanish journalist and TV reporter, who turned to writer and today the best-selling author in Spain and the best-selling Spanish author in the world . Famous author of "Alatriste" novels as he carried out quite a lot of the work of investigating historical documents relating to 17th Century Madrid. His novels have the common thread of being based on real historical times and that in each case a great deal of investigation goes into the making of his stories, as well as the fact that he has had to learn a great deal on topics ranging from chess-playing to historical first-editions from 16th Century Dutch masters to Informatics and even swordsmanship . His extraordinary imaginative abilities have been able to produce well-written adventure stories , being adapted for cinema the following novels : ¨The Fencing Master¨ , ¨Territorio Comanche¨ , ¨The ninth gate¨ , ¨Cachito¨ , ¨Gitano¨ and ¨Carta Esferica . Regular acting by a very young and without experience Kate Beckinsale as Julia , a restorer who comes undone after witnessing brutal murders on her way . Very good support cast though really wasted , all of them play weird people varying from psychotically aggressive , paranoids , drunken and killer ; being performed by Sinéad Cusack , Peter Wingfield , Helen McCrory , Michael Gough , Art Malik and James Villiers . Anti-climatic and inappropriate musical score by Philippe Sarde . Evocative cinematography by Alfonso Beato , but an alright remastering being necessary because of the copy of the film is worn-out . Shot on location in Canet de Mar (Castle) and Barcelona where appears several touristic palaces and monuments such as Park Güell , Casa Mila and Sagrada Familia Cathedral . This intrigue movie was ordinarily directed and with no originality , by Jim McBride . He is an American director and writer, known for Great balls of fire (1989), Big Easy (1986) , Breathless (1983) , The wrong man (1993) and The informant (1997) . Rating : 5.5/10 , average .

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• Potentially Interesting Subject Deserves Better Execution

  gpeevers2009-04-27

  Julia (Kate Beckinsale) an art restorer finds a hidden message in medieval painting she is working on that points to the murderer of one of the subjects depicted. Fascinated she digs deeper into the origins of the painting and the clues within. The old mystery though is soon paralleled by a new mystery as the people involved in her research start to die. The story is seemingly well suited to the British mystery genre but fails largely due to aspects of the execution. Kate Beckinsale manages with her portrayal to be both slightly awkward as well as endearingly cute but she seems decidedly out of her depth in a few of the more emotional/dramatic scenes. The film does boast a strong supporting cast of British character actors who may not have name recognition to some but should be highly recognizable to many including; John Wood, Sinead Cusack, Michael Gough. For the most part the supporting cast acquit themselves well considering how clichéd their characters are. While some may find it slow I was interested in the glimpse at the Art restoration process, I thought some things look authentic about the process, but other aspects didn't quite ring true. The current day murder mystery aspect was far less satisfying, character behavior and actions seemed inconsistent and for me the biggest flaw (considering the genre) was that the identity of the murderer seemed far to obvious. Further the brief flashbacks to the subjects of the painting did virtually nothing to advance or support the story, they simply felt unnecessary. The film is set in Barcelona but features an almost entirely English cast that speaks entirely in English and makes no attempt at Spanish accents. This is common in American films but seemed odd in a British film. The film makes reasonable use of the Barcelona locations including some wonderful Gaudi architecture, but I actually would have preferred even more attention on the culture and the city.

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• Sickening: please read the novels

  khatcher-22001-09-25

  It is perfectly comprehensible that in converting a book into a film, certain aspects become altered. There will always be deviations from perhaps the original idea, and of course certain literary concepts will be lost. Only very occasionally does a film come out that may seriously be considered a faithful adaptation of the novel in question. What is totally incomprehensible is the mutilation suffered by the highly readable 'La Tabla de Flandes' by the most popular Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The novel is set in Madrid – the film moved that scenario to Barcelona. The quiet, absorbed, meditative intellectual chess-player Muñoz in the book was replaced for the film by a vulgar, gaudy, flamboyant, almost gypsy-looking, blonde called Domenec, and the nicely composed Spanish señorita called Julia was transposed into a terribly British Kate Beckinsale. Indeed, all those fine characters penned by Pérez-Reverte were transformed into British Isles actors. Apart from these unbelievable – and unforgivable – changes of convenience, the film hustles along from scene to scene in a highly disordered and accident-ridden way, confusing those who have not read the novel, angering those who have, and no doubt leaving the author feeling nauseous. I have read just about everything Arturo Pérez-Reverte has published to date. In film versions I have only seen 'La Tabla de Flandes' and 'Territorio Comanche' (qv). Suffice to say: forget about the films in all cases, and Sr. Pérez-Reverte himself is the first to veto these films. But if you would like some challenging, exciting reading of good style and pace, carefully meditated and ingenious plots, frequently based on real history and exhaustive investigations to prepare them, I recommend in the following order: El Hussar, Territorio Comanche, El Maestro de Esgrima (q.v. - 1992 directed by Pedro Olea and worth a watch), El Club Dumas, La Tabla de Flandes, and La Piel del Tambor, as well as the 'Capitán Alatriste' series – all available in English (am not certain about the first title being in English) and probably in French and German, as well as other languages.

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• Truly appalling, indeed revolting, travesty of the work of a fine novelist

  robert-temple-12010-03-06

  This film is so terrible that everything about it vies for the distinction of being 'the worst of …' Is it the worst directed film? The worst acted film? The worst screenplay? One could go on and on. Every character in the film is despicable, and every actor and actress is at his or her worst, with the men and women equally disgusting in every respect. How is it possible to make one of the world's worst films from an interesting novel by a distinguished Spanish author, Arturo Pérez-Reverte? Well, these things happen. Just think of all the terrible films made of classic novels ever since the cinema began. Perhaps most offensive of all in this film is the performance of Kate Beckinsale, who looks like she is about ten years old, and the director is always making her take her clothes off so he can have another look at her breasts, and when they are covered up, the tight little garment over them keeps them well in view because the director is apparently obsessed with her and her sexuality. Nor does she seem any less obsessed with herself. We get great gory close-ups of her slobbering kisses with some of the most disgusting men one has seen in a long time, one young blond fellow in particular whose mouth is larger than her face is wide, so that one wonders how she avoids being swallowed. The arrogant vanity of all of these people, who clearly believe themselves to be the most beautiful creatures on earth when they are in fact extremely ugly (except for Beckinsale who qualifies as cute but disturbingly vain and rampant), is nauseating in the extreme. Only one performance in the film has any merit to it at all: John Wood as a lonely old queen who is the lifelong protector of Beckinsale manages some genuine pathos, and as that is the only wholesome emotion visible in the entire film, one notices it. The story could and should have been made into a really interesting film, a film as compelling as, for instance, that of Reverte's novel THE FENCING MASTER (1992), which was a triumph of film-making. But the story is thrown away and the horrible screenwriter starts using the word 'f…' as soon as the film commences and continues to do so throughout, obviously thinking that it will make him popular with some imaginary 'youth' or 'trendies' who he thinks might watch the movie sometime. But the idea that one is somehow going to be in the vanguard of popularity because one can say 'f…' a lot is a tired and outworn notion which never had the slightest credibility to begin with. Sinead Cusack is terrifyingly horrible in this film in every respect, and I expect she wishes she could destroy every print and DVD of it in existence to eliminate the evidence of her greatest folly. Michael Gough and James Villiers also disgraced themselves. No one was safe in the hands of that director. The original story itself is intriguing. A Flanders panel painting comes to light in Spain after 500 years in the private hands of a noble family who live in an ancient castle. The title of the film, UNCOVERED, does not really relate to Kate Beckinsale's juvenile form, but rather to the Flanders panel itself. Kate Becksinsale (aged ten or whatever she really is, as who can tell with her hair cut like a boy and her tomboyish figure) is the unlikely picture restorer hired to clean and restore this valuable painting, and if you can believe that you can believe anything. People hire ten year-olds to restore valuable paintings every day, surely. She commissions an infra-red photo and discovers that a mysterious inscription had been painted over, which says in Latin 'Who killed the knight?' Two men in the painting are playing chess, but one of the men himself is a knight, and it turns out that he was killed as part of the intrigue portrayed in the painting. Meanwhile people start getting killed all round Beckinsale, and these killings seem to be related to those of 500 years ago and follow the pattern of the same chess game which is portrayed in the painting (the next moves of which predict who will be killed next). Well, there is no point in going on, because who cares, when a film is so terrible, what the original story was.

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• Three Overlain Pretty Things

  tedg2005-12-31

  No question in my mind, there's no question that the vitality of film these days is in the hands of Spanish storytelling: layered narrative, magical deviations from causality, sex as physics. The beauty of woman and places deeply rooted to the elegance of understanding. There are narrative notions and cinematic qualities being nurtured in this broad community that are worth nurturing by us through appreciation. Here's a project that when you sum it all up is a dreadful movie, but it knows what it is about in terms of some intelligent ideas. It just didn't have the talent to match those ideas. Here's the deep spine which is attempted: Pérez-Reverte writes mystery stories in a magical realism tradition. His device is usually to play between the happening of a thing and the representation of that happening in a book or painting. The idea is to fold his representation (his book) into the story, reaping all sorts of storytelling advantages. Once these layers are established, he can jump in and out of various levels, and so can we as readers and some of the main characters as they develop insight. Layers are narrative layers, story threads, time, and almost always abstraction layers in terms of creating events and creating laws behind those events. But the books themselves have problems. The ideas in their construction are a whole lot more engaging than the books themselves. The actual skill at storytelling just isn't masterful enough to control, channel and exploit these conceptual tides that have been unleashed. One of his books was made into a film by a true master filmmaker, Polanski, and starred someone who knows that rare trick of layered or folded acting, where you inhabit more than one layer at a time. You had to work at it, but "Ninth Gate" really is as good as its ideas, and the ideas are in that film are both richer and crisper than in the source book. And now we have this film of another of Pérez-Reverte's works. A simpler book in key ways. One change it makes is to relocate the story to Barcelona and Gaudi's architecture. He is our most "folded" architect, and that change shows some real understanding of what is at stake. The filmmaker here is the guy who best exploited the environmental fabric of New Orleans to transform a simple story into a pretty interesting film in "The Big Easy." For some reason, he is unable to do the same here. I think he could have if he had more time to get into the rhythm of the place, which is less hedonistic than New Orleans but more achingly romantic; more poundingly African under a sunny, slightly mechanical nonchalance. The project could have used this, and it was in his power, but it eludes us this time. And that lack of control extends to more mundane production elements. The balance between realism and theatrical stereotypes/architypes was lost, probably unachievable with this cast. The cast centers on Kate Beckinsale as our surrogate detective, who really is alluring, and in precisely the way the project demands: physically, she is made here as befitting of the place: sloppy, casual (unshaven pits), boyish face, innocent questioner on the surface -- deeply sexual and possibly powerful underneath. But she couldn't deliver that last part, the power part. Indeed, any emotion is amateurish. I haven't really paid much attention to her later work. I think it about the same. So. What we have is a parcel of really great ideas. Important, central ones if you love movies and seriously use them in building a life and life awareness. These are all here, but mostly implicit. You have to almost ignore the movie to see them. But along the way, you get a pretty girl, the most intriguing city on the planet, and a painting that is worthy of its role. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

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