Here is one half of what has emerged from Al Pacino’s late-blooming obsession with Wilde’s tale of transgressive sexuality. This film records the play’s 2006 LA staging: hardly standard live-event fare, it’s closer to Mike Figgis or Michael Almereyda’s experiments in giving perilously archaic texts a scholarly redesign, shot by Miss Julie’s Benoît Delhomme in dynamic close-ups that capture the players thinking their way through Wilde’s tricky, arguably misogynist scenario. A pre-stardom Jessica Chastain makes Salome a tragically self-assured headhunter, punished for knowing exactly what she wants; she even aces her potentially ridiculous big dance, which – as modern mores dictate – involves far fewer than seven veils and moves apparently inspired by Shakira. Against her, Pacino’s vulgar, ethnically indeterminate Herod furnishes this banquet with easily digested ham: if he can’t quite bring all of Wilde’s often florid imagery into focus, he’s given it a good shout – literally so, in places.
Salomé review – Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain explore Wilde sex
Pacino’s brooding Herod lusts after a pre-fame Chastain in this filmed 2006 staging of Oscar Wilde’s sensual power play, writes Mike McCahill