Casanova

To Fellini, he was a debauched, despondent sex machine (1976's Il Casanova di Federico Fellini), humping everything from a hunchback to a wooden doll. And those of us who recall with fond nausea Donald Sutherland's impressively egalitarian exertions in that film may have a hard time believing in Heath Ledger's dandified lover this time around. And not just because those pretty lips were so recently sucking on Jake Gyllenhaal.

"I don't conquer, I submit," purrs Ledger's Giacomo, pecking at dainty female wrists and flicking his waist length ponytail. Trouble is, that's about all he does. Aside from a couple of tasteful postcoital escapes - one from a nunnery filled with satisfied novices - this Casanova is more interested in love than sex. He's the most passive degenerate I've ever seen.

Welcome to the world of soft-centered director Lasse Hallström (need I remind you of the gooey Chocolat?), perhaps the only director who could take a movie about Casanova and turn it into a tale of female empowerment. As fancied by Hallström, the infamous memoirist, philosopher and libertine is just a likable lad whose servicing of grateful Venetian housewives is a palliative for unresolved mommy issues. But even Freud is gauzed over here, limited to a brief scene of little C's actress mother (Helen McCrory) abandoning him to pursue a life of traveling thespianism. And if we are to believe Hallström and his screenwriters, Jeffrey Hatcher and Kimberly Simi, all of Casanova's serial shagging is simply a way to pass the time until she fulfills her promise to return.

In the interim, our hero is plagued by debt and the disapproval of the Catholic church, whose representatives want to string him up for lowering the tone of 18th-century Venice (as if that were even possible). In short, he's an embarrassment to the Doge (Tim McInnerny), who wants him to buck up, marry a virgin - if he can find one - and get the Vatican off everyone's back. The remainder of the movie occupies itself with Casanova's travails as he woos the virgin (Natalie Dormer), dodges the Inquisition (in the form of Jeremy Irons, resplendent in Titian ringlets), then falls for Francesca (an unappealing Sienna Miller), an uptight bluestocking who likes to dress as a man and write feminist philosophy. In short, Hallström's Casanova is a farce, a genre the gloomy Swedes are not exactly known for excelling in.

Richly photographed (by Oliver Stapleton) and occasionally witty, Casanova revels in Shakespearean identity-switching and authority-mocking. It's also more entertaining than it ought to be, primarily because of Ledger's low-key line readings and a game supporting cast. Oliver Platt suffers most as Francesca's betrothed, a wealthy lard merchant who clearly consumes more product than he sells, while Irons' mugging and pratfalling as the scheming Instigator Pucci deserves an award for enthusiasm alone. But the funniest turn comes from newcomer Dormer, who, with few words but more facial expressions than Jim Carrey, plays the virgin Victoria as a pressure chamber of explosive lust.

More cheeky than lewd, this Casanova is a family friendly film where the sex may be off screen but the romance is full frontal. So if you're the kind of person who believes the love of a good woman will transform male behavior, then this movie is for you. Me, I'll take Fellini any day.