Dir: Benoit Jacquot. France-Italy-Germany-UK. 2001. 120mins.

The latest director to accept the challenge of filming opera - a notoriously difficult genre - is French director Benoit Jacquot (Sade, Pas de Scandale). Jacquot has taken on Puccini's Tosca - a smart choice, as it is not only a crowd-pleaser, but also one of the shortest of the classic operas, running at around two hours. The director also has at his service the two most bankable singers currently available, Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiou. These combined factors will do much to bring in both opera-lovers and upscale cinemagoers.

Set in Rome, in the turbulent days that followed the suppression of the pro-Napoleonic Roman republic in 1801, Puccini's opera tells the story of the painter Mario Cavaradossi and his jealous mistress, Floria Tosca. Unaware that her lover has helped to conceal a political prisoner who has taken refuge in the church he is frescoing, Tosca is told by Baron Scarpia, the wily chief of police, that Mario is dallying with another woman. Carried forward by Scarpa's lustful duplicity and the lovers' chest-heaving passion, the tale spirals inexorably to a tragic finale on the ramparts of Castel Sant'Angelo.

Jacquot has come up with a sober but satisfying cinematic reading of Puccini's classic. Rather than overturn the static nature of staged opera, the director has tried, with some success, to find a screen equivalent. There are only three locations in Tosca, one for each act: the church, Scarpia's room in Palazzo Farnese, and the roof terrace of the castle. These are reproduced in the film, but explored in ways that would be impossible in a theatre.

In the first act, Jacquot uses both the length and the height of the church, with frequent angled long-shots from above; in the following one, there is an arresting image of Scarpa's face reflected in a knife. But Jacquot adds a fourth 'location': the recording studio. Black-and-white digital clips from recording sessions are spliced into the action; in one case, a question is sung in the studio and answered in the church. This doesn't add an awful lot to the cinematic experience, though it does arguably act as a guarantee of authenticity, given that all the singing on screen is done in lip-sync. A series of jerky, handheld inserts showing the true, Roman locations of the scenes in the opera - used to fill the screen during the instrumental passages - are less enlightening.

Alagna and Gheorghiou hold their own as actors; the latter's face, in particular, is fascinating to watch, in a silent movie sort of way. Best of all, though, is Ruggero Raimondi's rendition of Scarpa, which brings out to the full the magnificent, seething hypocrisy of the character.

Jacquot also knows how to squeeze drama out of costumes, framing and lighting. And although the theatrical release of a filmed opera is always going to be a short and specialised affair, there are other commercial benefits: excellent video shelf life, good DVD potential and a soundtrack (released by EMI Classics) which will be billed as the new Alagna-Gheorgiou recording of Tosca.

Prod co: Euripide Productions (Fr).
Co prod: Integral Films (Ger), Veradia Film (It), France 3 Cinéma (Fr), Axiom Films (UK).
Int'l sales: President Films.
Prod: Daniel Tosca du Plantier.
Scr: Benoit Jacquot, after the libretto of Puccini's opera.
Cinematography: Romain Winding A.F.C.
Prod des: Sylvain Chauvelot. Ed: Luc Barnier.
Music: Antonio Pappano.
Main cast: Angela Gheorghiou, Roberto Alagna, Ruggero Raimondi.