Silk (2007)

Image credit: Jacques-Yves Gucia

CRUSHED SILK Keira Knightley has little to do in this less-than-smooth adaptation of the '96 novel

What we're told in Silk is that Michael Pitt personifies a French 19th-century silkworm merchant in love with his wife but obsessed with a mysterious woman he glimpses on business in Japan. What we see is a mopey fellow without the energy to comb his hair. As the wife with even less to do in this wan, generically pretty adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's 1996 novel, Keira Knightley doles out dewy smiles to her costar like biscuit rewards. This leaves Alfred Molina, as Pitt's boss, to try something — anything — to enliven the movie.