The Return: a ‘lethally effective’ Odyssey adaptation

The last time Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche shared the screen together, in 1996’s “The English Patient”, “he was a severely singed explorer and she was his sexy nurse”, said Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times. He is “in somewhat better shape” for their cinematic reunion, in this “visually bleak and emotionally gripping” retelling of the final section of Homer’s “Odyssey”.

When the story begins, 20 years have passed since Odysseus (Fiennes) left Ithaca to fight in the Trojan War, and he has long since been taken for dead. His kingdom is “in ruins”, and his faithful wife Penelope (Binoche) is “hounded by a swarm of squabbling suitors”; even their son, Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) pleads with her to remarry, so as to ensure their safety.