Brides (2004)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer Gallery-Photo Trailer-A Heart Elsewhere, Love's Brother,Time Out,To Be And To Have
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	123:06 (Case: 128)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Pantelis Voulgaris
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Damian Lewis Victoria Haralabidou Andréa Ferréol Evi Saoulidou Dimitri Katalifos Irini Iglesi Evelina Papoulia Steven Berkoff
Case	?
RPI	$34.95	Music	Stamatis Spanoudakis

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Greek Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Directed by Pantelis Voulgaris and produced by Martin Scorsese, Brides follows the emotional trans-Atlantic journey on the King Alexander of seven hundred European mail-order brides in the early 1920s. Sent to America to join single immigrant men and (most importantly) to provide dowries for their families, each of the brides struggle to reconcile their own hopes and emotions with their new fate. Niki (Victoria Haralabidou) is on her way to Chicago to replace her sister as a tailor's wife; Haro (Evi Saoulidou), forced to leave behind her lover hospitalized in the Greco-Turkish war, searches his love letters daily for solace. At only sixteen, Olga (Liza Kouznetsova) has been selected by the dubious Karaboulat (Steven Berkoff) for special employment in the States but falls in love with one of the ship's crew. Touching all of their lives is American photographer Norman Harris (Damian Lewis) heading home to what he hopes will be a new start. Breaking his vow to leave photography behind, he captures the stoic beauty of each of the brides on film and finds himself falling for the strong-willed Niki.

    Brides deals with tragic themes of broken hearts and impossible love with a generally detached observation, avoiding melodrama (with the exception of one or two scenes) and allowing the situation, like Harris' photographs, to speak for itself: the few moments of overwrought emotion stick out disconcertingly amidst otherwise competent direction. While detachment works effectively to capture what the brides must feel, the chemistry between Harris and Niki is far too banal and flat. Lewis' performance in particular is unconvincing and his feelings for Niki sound merely recited by rote. The film's middle section, too, lags and everything wraps up exactly as expected. With a better casting decision or two and some tighter editing, Brides could have become an excellent, if somewhat depressing, film. As it is, it captures a mood perfectly and unveils the now often forgotten economic basis of marriage, but on the whole falls short of truly memorable.

Video

    The video transfer for Brides is very good. The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (16x9 enhanced), close to the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

    Sharpness is very good and shadow detail is excellent (rain tends to muddy the detail though). It's not as sharp as we've become used to, but the slight softness of the image gives the transfer a much more filmic feel. Some grain is visible and I noticed some low level noise, particularly in the opening credits. Enhancing the mood of the narrative, colours lean towards greys and blues, all rendered without problem.

    There is nothing much to report in terms of artefacts. Edge enhancement is visible. A fine scattering of film dirt is visible in most shots, but by no means detracts from viewing.

    Subtitles are forced and do not appear for lines spoken in English. Several lines of non-English dialogue are left untranslated. The film is divided into sixteen chapters and the layer change takes place at 70:53.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Audio has been transferred well. A single Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded track is available. Spoken languages include English, Greek, Russian, and possibly Turkish.

    Dialogue is crisp and audible. I did notice some rare moments when audio sync was ever so slightly off. The rears support the score and carry some of the bellow-deck chatter. In general the surrounds create an effective ambience. The sounds of the ocean and the ship are always present.

    The score by Stamatis Spanoudakis is beautiful, combining traditional Greek and Russian sounds with melancholy strings.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Theatrical Trailer

    2:56 - 4x3, letterboxed.

Gallery-Photo

    Approximately twenty images.

Trailer

    Four trailers for other Palace Films.

    As far as I can tell, Brides has not been released in Region 1, although this release is coded for all regions.

    Brides captures the tragedy experienced by mail-order brides but is not as affecting as it would like to be due to a weak performance or two.

    Video and audio are very good and suffer no significant problems.

    Extras are very inconsequential.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall