Review of The Stone Council

Some months ago, Italian TV showed a French miniseries called "Dolmen". It was very bad, and they very soon cancelled it and rescheduled it at improbable hours. This film reminded me pretty much of Dolmen. It has the same dark and anguishing atmosphere, the same mythological, esoteric background and, unfortunately, the same bad computer generated wild animals that oppress the characters. The film casts Italian diva Monica Bellucci as the lead character. Quite unusually for her, she wears very short hair and doesn't show much of her celebrated sex appeal. Her acting basically consists in screams and panting. She does the wildest, most improbable things, like crawling in an air conduct and fighting with the previously indicated animals. The most surprising thing in the film is that a great actress like Catherine Deneuve agreed to appear in it. I wonder why - maybe she just needed some money. However, she is barely recognizable. At a point her character turns in a (bad, computer generated) bear (!!). Monica Bellucci even stabs her with a ritual knife. This should explain how ludicrous some scenes are. More, the film is full of clichés, like the Chosen little boy with a mark on his body and magical powers, or as I said, people crawling in air conducts (classic clichè!) and snakes appearing everywhere. At a point I really wanted to leave the theater, I stayed just because I'm learning French and I thought it could be useful for the language. I just hope that if I work very hard, one day I'll speak French as well as the Mongolian people shown in the film... 'cause of course, in this film every old Mongolian man living in an hut in the steppe speak perfect French! Yeah sure! If you want my advice on this film, skip it, you won't miss much. My vote is 4.5/10.