Tristan & Isolde

What I must now confess was Sophia Myles-fest this week (hey, I had to pause this movie to watch her in Moonlight last night while thinking about my post on her in Dracula) continued with this real downer of a movie.  I made it through what ended up being the relatively happy parts (they are separated and she marries his stepfather) last night, then finished it up this afternoon, fast forwarding through most of it because the story was just too painful to watch.  The absolute best part was when Isolde tells her husband the king exactly what was going on, and he does exactly what you'd wish he would do, which is recognize that these two need to be together, as painful as it must be for him (although we can speculate that maybe he did have one more go with the soon-to-be ex-wife before making his decision.  I like to think he did, because as it turns out no one else ever did).  At this point Tristan screws everything up by being honorable to a definite fault (although you have to like the way he parlayed it into the unification of England).
I'm not sure, but I think here I could never quite buy the love story.  Maybe it's that Franco, while good, is just not emotive enough (not that he didn't try) to get me to believe what he was feeling.  And as much as I like Myles, in a role like this where she can't be flirty, and she's largely deprived of contemporary makeup, she is not particularly persuasive as someone's true love.  What I mean is that in Titanic I could see not being able to picture life without Kate Winslet - in Mad About You I couldn't see ever leaving the apartment if I were married to Helen Hunt.  Here, I'd be disappointed, but I'm pretty sure I could get over it and find a good looking serving wench and a flagon of ale, and just hope the old guy drops dead relatively soon so I can take his place.  Again, Winslet had a corset and the ability to be very flirty, while Myles is laboring in the Dark Ages, and with her eyes on their best behavior (which is a damn waste, if you ask me - a few of her come hither looks and the movie would have sprung to life, because she is irresistible when they let her be - you can see that on Moonlight).  But you see the problem - Tristan's choice of honor over love really is the right call, and what you'd expect he would do (besides it's not like what he was doing is something he wouldnt do if they were together - he just had to create the British Empire before they left on their honeymoon.  He didn't know for sure he wasn't coming back, and it wasn't like he hadn't gotten killed before and lived.  As Mr. Spock famously said "I've been dead before.")  At bottom they just didn't persuade me that it was anything more than sulking over a crush.  A well-founded crush, but all the same, just a crush.