Never heard of this film before today, but it's a really lovely idea for a story: a writer kills the star actor who took credit for his biography of him, and they both end up in a purgatorial hotel for the celebrity dead.
It's an international production, and it can't have had a large budget, which perhaps explains the odd visual patchiness it has: some of the scenes (mostly the ones on the ferryboat) look absolutely first rate, while many others look distinctly made-for-TV. Peter O'Toole has great screen presence and Colin Firth does OK too, but few of the rest of the cast really carve out anything memorable or substantial, and one continually gets the feeling more could have been made of the idea: so many scenes and shots and lines are functional rather than unforgettable, and the end just sort of peters out in an unconvincing fashion.
So it's not a lost classic, but it is a nice little film that more people should know about, and in the hands of a better writer and director, it could have been something truly for the ages.
It's an international production, and it can't have had a large budget, which perhaps explains the odd visual patchiness it has: some of the scenes (mostly the ones on the ferryboat) look absolutely first rate, while many others look distinctly made-for-TV. Peter O'Toole has great screen presence and Colin Firth does OK too, but few of the rest of the cast really carve out anything memorable or substantial, and one continually gets the feeling more could have been made of the idea: so many scenes and shots and lines are functional rather than unforgettable, and the end just sort of peters out in an unconvincing fashion.
So it's not a lost classic, but it is a nice little film that more people should know about, and in the hands of a better writer and director, it could have been something truly for the ages.