Silk

A sweeping romantic drama woven around a material of ethereal fragility. When the pébrine epidemic - the spotted silkworm disease that ravaged eggs from European hatcheries in the 1860s - spread overseas, the entire European silk trade seemed doomed. To continue his lucrative trade, roguish French trader Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) decides to send the young military officer Herve Joncour (Michael Pitt) on a perilous mission to Japan, separating him for months on end from Helene (Keira Knightley), his lovely and devoted schoolteacher wife. It is here in Japan that Herve encounters the powerful and feared local baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho), with whom he will trade for the precious silkworm eggs. And it is here, in a world unlike anything that Herve has experienced before, that he becomes entranced by the baron's concubine, a deeply mysterious girl of intoxicating beauty. Without speaking one another's language, together they share a doomed, obsessive love. A film of painterly beauty and ravishing romance, SILK is an historically rapturous epic romance of East meets West.