The Man Who Cried

By EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * )

An ambitious movie that doesn't quite come off but deserves three stars for trying, The Man Who Cried is the story of Suzie (Christina Ricci), a Jewish girl from Russia who becomes an English girl, a Paris dancing girl, a wartime refugee and finally her father's daughter.

The story begins in Russia in 1927 when Suzie's father decides to move the family to America. They are separated and Suzie is adopted by a well-meaning but dour English couple.

She does not fit into England. Suzie moves to Paris and is taken under the sequins of a gold-digging showgirl, Lola (Cate Blanchett). Lola has her eye on the famous opera singer, Dante (John Turturro); at the same time Suzie falls for Cesar (Johnny Depp), reprising his Chocolat role note-for-note as a gypsy on a white horse in Dante's production. As the clouds of World War II gather, Dante supports Mussolini and despises gypsies and Jews, losing Lola and sending Suzie on the run once more.

Directed by Sally Potter, a Brit who makes movies about women who use art and artifice to escape from the roles that society has assigned them — Orlando (1993), about a character who lives 400 years as a man then as a woman; The Tango Lesson (1997), about herself becoming a tango dancer in Argentina — it's a lush, beguiling movie that just fails to engage.

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• DVD features: movie (96 min); trailers, photo galleries.