46/20
The third time Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche starred together in a film
Story
After 20 years Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, where he finds his wife held captive by suitors fighting to become king, and his son facing death at their hands. To regain his family and everything he has lost, Odysseus must rediscover his strength.
Odysseus: For some, war becomes home
They also worked together in Wuthering Heights (1992) and The English Patient (1996). Penelope: How can men find their way to war but not find their way home?
and without support from each other
Focused on immersing the viewer in the multifactorial pain and suffering of Penelope and Odysseus during Odysseus’ return home to Ithaca, this treatise felt the need to fairly systematically explore the challenges many soldiers face upon returning from active duty, including PTSD and other mental health problems, reintegration into their previous life in family and society, and flashbacks of memories and pain both endured and inflicted, and the resulting inner change, which it is irreversible. The Return is fueled by a wide variety of casts to allow the viewer to experience this rollercoaster that the two key protagonists climb to significant heights, the latter thanks to the unique and special resilience of both Penelope and Odysseus in this difficult time in their lives.
In fact, the two are kept quite separate for most of the build, which makes the catharsis stronger in the later, more intense, thriller-like part of the slower-burning film
Fiennes brings his unique style of portraying suffering to this work – a great expansion of his wonderful skill set from his adjacent portrayals of pain and anguish in Spider and The End of the Affair. Binoche is the perfect choice for Penelope, as the viewer could be somewhat tricked into feeling and hoping that the two will come together in much the same way they were close throughout The English Patients, and Pasolini exploits this to create tension additional in this work in those whose memory of the English patient is alive.
