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Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Release Date: April 2001
Distributor: UIP
Certificate: 15
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, John Hurt, Christian Bale, David Morrissey, Irene Pappas
Director: John Madden
Running Time: 131 mins
Academy Award reg; winner Nicolas Cage (City of Angels) and Penelope Cruz (All About My Mother) star in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, an epic tale about the enduring hope of love and the devastating brutality of war, set amid the Italian occupation of Greece during World War II.
On the Greek island of Cephallonia during the early days of World War II, the Italian army has moved in to occupy the territory. Led by the handsome Captain Antonio Corelli (Cage), they march triumphantly onto the islands.

When Corelli, a cultivated man with an irrepressibly jovial personality, whose favourite possession is his mandolin, falls in love with the beautiful Pelagia (Cruz), one knows that trouble is on the way. Initially Pelagia, the daughter of the town doctor (Hurt), is offended by Corelli's behaviour, but she slowly warms to his charms as they are forced to share her father's home.

Pelagia is engaged to Mandras (Bale), a local fisherman who has recently left the island to join the Greek partisans. With him gone, the relationship between Corelli and Pelagia grows stronger and stronger, and as the people of the village begin to accept him as part of their lives, so does she. But even though Corelli's love for Pelagia, and his fondness for the villagers, begin to make him doubt his very reasons for being there, the war comes much closer to home and the two lovers must make their most difficult choices, choices between their countries, their families and their lovers. Unless their love can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, they will both have to make terrible sacrifices.
Director John Madden, who previously direcred 'Shakespeare in Love' and 'Mrs. Brown', has created a stunning movie based on the novel, Corelli's Mandolin, by Louis de Bernieres. Putting the beautiful Greek islands of Corfu and Cephallonia, where the novel was set, to the best use, he and screenwriter Shawn Slovo use the film to explore not only the central love triangle, but also to look at life on the Greek islands, and how it changes with the coming of war.
With 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin', Nicolas Cage returns to a genre that he has not had much to do with. From teen star to action hero, the only one of Cage's numerous roles has been as a romantic lead set in the past, 'Peggy Sue Got Married'. A strange story about what happens when Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) faints at a High school reunion, and wakes to find herself in her own past.

Clayton Everett