THE ENGLISH PATIENT






By Rebecca Ascher-Walsh & Kristen Baldwin Entertainment Weekly
Issue 341/342
Features/Fall Movie Review
August 23 - 30, 1996.



STARRING RALPH FIENNES, JULIETTE BINOCHE,KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS, WILLEM DAFOE

DIRECTED BY ANTHONY MINGHELLA



If you think the story of a World War II pilot, bedridden in an Italian hospital, covered in bandages, and drifting through memories of an old romance sounds less than cinematic, Twentieth Century Fox agreed: During preproduction on the $27 million adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel, the studio yanked its financing. "Someone at Fox said, 'I want four [box office] stars,'" says producer Saul Zaentz. Miramax stepped in and the cast and crew agreed to take pay cuts. Fiennes and Binoche, who play patient and nurse, had teamed up before on a 1992 adaptation of Wuthering Heights that, says Fiennes, "didn't have a happy afterlife." (It was shelved for two years before ending up on television.) "It was nice to work together on something positive." While Binoche was always Minghella's first choice, Thomas (Four Weddings and a Funeral) was a harder sell as Fiennes' love interest. "I wrote letters, I auditioned, I pleaded, I begged," she says. "I had to fight like mad." (Nov. 8)

BUZZ: Should win raves except, possibly, from the novel's fans: "My first words to Michael," admits Zaentz, "were 'Don't worry, we'll f---up your book.'"


 

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