Brides

Women take an epic journey to the New World in the long-winded 'Brides'.

Herald rating: * * *

Sumptuous, sentimental and long-winded, this period melodrama by a veteran Greek director is old-fashioned in both the positive and negative senses of the word.

In style, the material is like a television mini-series - indeed, it moves so slowly it feels like one at times - and it's that kind of scope that the epic subject matter deserves.

But it's so underwritten that it feels stretched and it's hampered by clunky plotting and dialogue.

The brides of the title are Greek and Russian women in 1922, engaged to men in America whom they have never met and undertaking the long journey to the New World.

Among the more than 700 crammed into steerage is Niki Douka (Haralabidou), the self-sacrificing eldest daughter of a family overburdened with single women who has left her home in Samothrace to marry a Greek tailor in Chicago.

Meanwhile, up in first class, Norman Harris (Lewis), a disenchanted war photographer, is heading home.

And the villain of the piece is an unscrupulous Georgian "bridal agent" (the reliably malevolent Berkoff) who resents Harris' attempts to interfere with his valuable human cargo.

Harris ends up kissing one of these two and having a fist fight with the other.

The story, rich in potential for cross-cultural conflicts and dramatic ironies, could have been something quite special but debutante screenwriter Ioanna Karystian has a heavy hand.

Her characters talk like, well, like characters in movies, actually, and not like real people, and each element of her storyline slots into place with an almost audible click.

Only the refreshingly plausible finale achieves any sort of dramatic grace - and by then it's a bit too late.

CAST: Damian Lewis, Victoria Haralabidou, Steven Berkoff
DIRECTOR: Pantelis Voulgaris
RUNNING TIME: 128 minutes
RATING: PG sexual references, mild coarse language, nudity
SCREENING: Academy
REVIEWER: Peter Calder
VERDICT: An attempt at a big-screen epic about mail-order brides heading for the New World is underwritten and clunky though Steven Berkoff is as reliably malevolent as ever.