Wait, how is this the same Ralph Fiennes who is burning up the awards season for playing a solemn cardinal in Conclave? He’s lean, ripped, and heavily-bearded in the new trailer for The Return, in which he plays the iconic Greek hero of the Trojan War, Odysseus.
The Return was co-written, directed, and produced by Uberto Pasolini, the filmmaker behind the powerful dramas Still Life and Nowhere Special. Premiering earlier this year at TIFF, the film stars Fiennes as Odysseus, while Juliette Binoche plays his wife, Penelope, who has been left to protect the throne while her husband was away for twenty years fighting in the Trojan War. With Odysseus returning to Ithaca, will have to fight to reclaim what was lost.
Charlie Plummer, Marwan Kenzari, Claudio Santamaria, and Angela Molina also star. The film is a reunion between Fiennes and Binoche, who starred together in The English Patient twenty-eight years ago.
It’s clear from the trailer that this version of Odysseus’s story does away with the mythology, the gods, the monsters, and focuses on the human will to survive. It is, in some ways, a lot like 2004’s Troy, which also did away with the most fantastical aspects.
SYNOPSIS: “After 20 years away, Odysseus (Fiennes) washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The King has returned from the Trojan War, but much has changed in his kingdom. His beloved wife Penelope (Binoche) is a prisoner in her own home, hounded by suitors vying to be king. Their son Telemachus faces death at the hands of these suitors, who see him as merely an obstacle to their pursuit of the kingdom. Odysseus has also changed — scarred by his experience of the Trojan war, he is no longer the mighty warrior from years past — but he must rediscover his strength in order to win back all he has lost.”
Bleecker Street opens The Return in theaters on December 6th.
