Uncovered (1995)

Just perfect...

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Watching this film will leave you with two impressions.1. There are no Spanish people in Spain.2. Kate Beckinsale had quite a perky bosom in the mid 90s.Set in Barcelona, this story concerns a young art restorer named Julia (Kate Beckinsale) who is working on a 500 year old painting for her art dealer friend Menchu (Sinead Cusack). Julia discovers a secret message hidden within the painting about a murder half a millennia ago. Julia's efforts to unravel this ancient mystery involve her old art professor and lover Alvaro (Art Malik), her longtime guardian and prissy British homosexual Cesar (John Wood) and a streetwise chess hustler named Domenec (Paudge Behan). Julia also has to deal with Don Manual (Michael Gough), the terminally ill owner of the painting, his niece Lola (Helen McCrory) and her sexual predator of a husband Max (Peter Wingfield). But as she solves the riddle secreted within the painting, people suddenly start dying around Julia in a fashion that seems to be a continuation of the murder 500 years ago. I'd say that Julia then has to race against time to find the killer, but nothing in this movie ever moves faster than a leisurely walk.If you want to know what Uncovered is like, imagine an extra long episode of the public television program Mystery! where Kate Beckinsale gets naked. That's an almost perfect description of this film and I'm sure it would be a big hit during pledge week. If those sort of British mysteries are your thing, you'll probably like this movie a great deal. If not, well…you still might like seeing Beckinsale's boobs, but there's not much else here for you.The only other interesting thing, besides Beckinsale's sweet rack, is that even though the story is set in Spain, there are no Spanish people in it. Now, you could accept that everything in the movie happens within the British expatriate community in Barcelona. However, that doesn't excuse trying to pass off Michael Gough as the supposed last survivor of a Spanish family that traces its lineage back for centuries. Gough beats out Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil for the title of "Least Spanish Spaniard in Cinematic History". I look more Spanish than Michael Gough.I should also caution you that even though Uncovered is about two separate mysteries, there's nothing all that mysterious about either of them. There aren't a bunch of clues in the story that you can notice and figure out who committed either the ancient killing or the modern slayings. The answers are just sort of presented to the audience.Uncovered is definitely a case of "You'll like it, if you like that sort of thing". That sort of thing being, in this case, British mysteries and/or Kate Beckinsale's breasts.

This is a worthwhile experience, despite all the many flaws the film has. It's a weak work in most of the skills you may think of, related to film technique, and film expression: The acting is childish, this applies to practically every participant. Exception made to Beckinsale, she moves around in a naive boyish manner, but she distills sex, she is that character who concentrates attentions, without being excessively aware of that. She does it well. The rest of the acting is weak. The editing doesn't help as well. The premises for the montage work in a film such as this one weren't so hard to follow. They just had to tell physical actions, linear and common. Yet there are transitions, basic continuity problems that aren't solved, expressions in the faces that change, and so on. The music is also not well placed, it's a bad soundtrack in its own musical value, but above all in the mood that transmits. The tribal references weren't needed, and in the kind of story depicted, noir influenced, it would have been nice to have the music link the sets and evolutions in the story line.But there are three things for which i think this is worth taking a look. One is the narrative structure, how the story moves on. This is based on a novel by Pérez-Reverte, the man who also wrote Ninth Gate. So we have a merging of art and life, the story happening in front of us was "written" or at least determined many years ago, buy an artist, in this case a painter. The first scene is masterful in transmitting this, really it was one of the most economic and meaningful first scenes i saw ever. It basically starts with a closeup of a hand in a painting (a hand as a synonym for power, ability to do things), and the camera moves away from the painting (it moves, it's not a zoom out)and we get to see the border of the painting fully merged with the "real" environment surrounding it. This illusion of merger works for a few moments after which we get into the environment and momentarily forget the painting. This really works.Other thing is the use of House Batló, by Gaudi. It's interesting how the camera (and the editing) lies about the building, to enhance it's qualities. It's not a particularly brilliant exploration of the space, but it's quite competent: what happens is, we get Beckinsale going up the stairs that lead to the first floor, she rings the bell in that first floor. These stairs are beautiful, they curve like the back of an animal, you get the sensation of elevation, instead of going up. Than this is edited and the inner space we get is from inside the attic, which is built with bows that remind an animal spine and bones. Later in the film, we have an outside establishing shot that leads the camera, from the outside, all the way up to the attic. We understand that the character lives in the attic, not in the first floor. This was interesting and showed a specific interest in playing with the house. A side note is that this film is a good opportunity for you to check the great ground floor of the house, which is today polluted by the bars which conduct the tourists, and the tourists themselves, lining up to get in, and filling the sidewalk around. Pity. I have a theory that tourism is literally killing and sucking life out of our best places in the world, but this is another discussion.Anyway, the touristic gaze can also be seen in the shots that depict the city. Here we also get lies, usually related to the intention of getting the establishing shots. Here i think they messed up. They didn't have to show all the known places all the time. There are fantastic relatively hidden places in that city that show more of its mood and life than the monuments. One of those places is actually used, the St Antoni market (the protagonist lives in front of it). The place is alive, and they use it well in some scenes. But than they lie about the city, so we have her going from Batló, to Rambla, to the Temple, to the market as if they were close enough to walk to, one after the other, sequenced like i said. It's a lie, i have nothing against it, but i have against making the postcard taking nothing useful out of it. A good use of common architecture is the one made with Beckinsale's house, especial its central stairs, and central lifter. The use of Park Guëll is not particularly interest, except for some movement between columns, but that's it. And in that movement, they inserted some staged flirting between couples. Very poor, very artificial, they didn't need to do it, the park has an interesting life on its own.My opinion: 3/5http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

This film has had some negative reviews but I don't feel that they are entirely fair. The book that the film is based on is very literary and lifeless and the events improbable. So even though the book has a clever plot it is TOO clever. It's like clockwork where you can see little wheels moving instead of living people. The film tries to correct this by changing it into a story of characters of flesh and blood that can arouse the interest of the audience. It succeeds in some ways but the whole thing somehow falls apart and never manages to be entirely engaging or convincing. A good example of this is that the reason why and how the murders have a connection with the painting and the chess problem is never explained in the film. I mean why would the murderer bother to connect what he does to the chess problem? It's explained in the book but not the film. It's still worth watching and it certainly has more life in it than the book.

Uncovered is a little cute film that doesn't have much to say but says what it has quite charmingly. It was actually the plot that led me to seeing it and actually it turned out to be not exactly as I expected. Kate Beckinsale restores paintings. When she accidentally finds a hidden inscription that translates in Latin as "Who killed the knight?" in a 500 year old Flemish painting that passed from generation to generation in a certain rich family, she decides to find everything about it and to uncover the mystery that surrounds it. The painting depicts a chess game between two noble men and the hidden inscription leads her to believe that one of them was wrongly murdered and that the painter wanted to uncover the injustice done without putting himself in danger. But as she starts searching deeper and deeper the people around her meet with sudden and unjustified death. Desperate to solve the mystery she finds a young man, expert in chess, and convinces him to play the game backwards and see where that leads them. The whole film is actually nothing more than an Agatha Christian whodunit that lacks surprise since we can (or at least I could) guess from the beginning who the murderer is. Apart from that, it looks nice and that's especially because of Kate Beckinsale's performance who once more brings an amazingly fresh character to life. Also watch out for Peter Wingfield (Methos from the TV series Highlander!!!) that becomes the laughing stock of everyone as he plays the macho man who ends up kicked around by women. Overall, don't expect to see the movie of a lifetime but it's no doubt interesting. And Kate Beckinsale and John Wood are filling their shoes satisfactorily enough.