John Malkovich won acclaim in 1988 for wearing a wig in Stephen Frears’ “Dangerous Liaisons,” and he’s going that route again in “Casanova Variations.” In case you were wondering what that looks like in this day and age, there’s now a new trailer for this film about the greatest seduction artist of all time.
Directed by Michael Sturminger, who adapted his own stage play (“The Giacomo Variations”), the film tells a pair of stories about Giacomo Casanova, the Italian writer and adventurer who was so famous for his affairs that his name became synonymous with smooth-talking lotharios and womanizers the world over. He was linked to, among others, Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great. The guy got around.
The live version has been described as “a chamber opera play,” featuring the music of Casanova’s contemporaries like Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, and that aspect certainly comes through in this trailer. But while this appears to be set in Casanova’s day (he lived between 1725...