Jacques-Yves Gucia
After seeing Keira Knightley in Pride & Prejudice, François Girard targeted her for his adaptation of Alessandro Barrico's 19th-century love story. ''Everyone thought [getting her] was unrealistic,'' he says. But Knightley — who the director says is ''a great fan of the book'' — said yes. She plays the wife of an officer (Hedwig and the Angry Inch's Michael Pitt) who's sent to gather silkworms in Japan, where he has an obsessive affair with a concubine. Why do we suspect this doesn't have a happy ending?
