A European mystery film with beautiful location shots in Barcelona. (One of the main characters lives in an apartment building designed by Gaudi himself.)
The restoration of an old Flemish painting leads to a historical mystery, which then develops a parallel in a modern day murder mystery. The restorer (Kate Beckinsale) uncovers a hidden inscription beneath the painting, and that eventually leads her to unlock some secrets hidden in the content of the painting itself, consisting of subtle, long-forgotten messages involving an obscure politically-motivated murder. The painter, unable to represent the murder directly, chose to hide allegorical clues in a chess game being played by the subjects.
Meanwhile, events in the restorer’s own life start to mirror the progress of that very same chess game. Some of her friends and family are murdered, and she is sent a “captured” chess piece for each victim. She doesn’t really “get it,” so she enlists a chess expert to help her predict the killer’s next move.
This film is now 30 years old, but I always enjoy reviewing the nudity every decade or so. Kate Beckinsale later delivered better performances and became a star, but this remained the highlight of her nudography.
It’s a shame she never did more nudity. It’s probably because she took up diving and spends most of her time off the deep end.
Beckinsale studied French and Russian literature at New College, Oxford, so she has significant brainpower. One of her classmates described her as “whip-clever, slightly nuts.”
I think she has been working on upgrading the “slightly” bit.
Kate Beckinsale has a reported IQ of 152, which places her in the top 1% of the population and is considered “highly gifted.” She has mentioned that her intelligence may have been a handicap in her Hollywood career.
For a British actress, she had a pretty good amount of success in Hollywood. Hard to see where she had a hard time. For all her brains, she’s more renowned for her beauty.
Story I heard was the director forced her to get topless, so she wound up taking a “wee” in his thermos as revenge – probably main reason she never really got nude again