In 19th century France, a mill town relies on silk for its fortunes and when a disease strikes the worms, threatening the village's entire economy, mill owner Baldabiou (Molina) decides that the only solution is to dispatch someone to Japan to fetch new worms. It is a risky proposition; Japan is a closed society that does not welcome Westerners, but young Herve Joncour is up for the challenge. Eager to be separated from the army and dying to get out from under his mayor father's (Kenneth Welsh) thumb, Joncour eagerly accepts the undertaking that offers an added incentive: Should he succeed in his endeavor, he will make a fortune and be able to provide his bride Helene (Keira Knightley) with a fine home and enough land so that she may indulge her passion for gardening.

In the snowy mountaintop hamlet where he travels to fetch the worms, Joncour is off balance. Only the town boss (Koji Yakusho) speaks English, and while the man is charming and welcoming, there is no mistaking that he wields absolute and merciless power. He also possesses a gorgeous mistress (Sei Ashina) and as devoted as Herve is to Helene and as obviously dangerous as any alliance with this woman would be, her presence is enough incentive to guarantee his return to the village. On another trip, he meets a Belgian gun merchant (Callum Keith Rennie) who warns him that Japan is unstable, but even that is not enough to keep him from returning to the country. Even when Baldabiou finds another, closer source for worms, Joncour convinces him to keep trading with Japan.

The pomposity that too often infects period drama is omnipresent in Silk, along with pacing that is beyond glacial. The story unfolds over several decades and the movie is so slow that it seems to take place in real time. The dialogue is insipid and for this being a story about grand passion and a man caught between the two great loves of his life, it is remarkably bloodless. Ashina is a cipher, offering nothing beyond her beauty, but even the usually spunky Knightley is bland and colorless. Only Yakusho, familiar to Western audiences from his roles in the original Shall We Dance and The Eel, transcends the movie's banality with a passionate, engaging performance.

Then there is Pitt, a ravishing man whose most remarkable feature is his expressionless eyes, so reminiscent of a doll's. He was fine in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, Gus Van Sant's Last Days, and Tom DiCillo's Delirious, all films that capitalized on the kind of callow vapidity that the actor brings to every role. But in Silk, playing an ardent character with depth, he is out of his league. There is a lot wrong with the film, but even if there had been more right, that singular bit of miscasting would have doomed it to failure.

Shot in Canada, Japan, and Italy, the film's imagery is ravishing, but it offers nothing beyond that lovely surface. Coming from a talent as huge as Girard's, it is a huge letdown, less Silk than sow's ear.