The new Casanova has loosened up

I must confess that I watched the opening scenes of Casanova with some trepidation. A movie that begins with a man in a billowy linen shirt writing with a quill pen by candlelight, accom-panied by a plummy voice-over -- a "feather film," as my predecessor Vincent Canby might have said -- is rarely headed anywhere very interesting.

Imagine my surprise, then, when Casanova turned out to be not a bewigged and brocaded white elephant, but rather a lively, sly and altogether charming farce.

While it takes a few cues from Casanova's notoriously untrustworthy memoirs, Casanova seems more directly inspired by the lighthearted, madcap comedies of near contemporaries like Pierre Marivaux and Casanova's fellow Venetian, Carlo Goldoni.

In following those theatrical models, the film feels at once historically faithful and breezily, even pointedly modern.

Casanova is a man of mystery, known to his fellow Venetians by reputation rather than by face. Moviegoers will recognize him, of course, as Heath Ledger, the mumbling ranch hand from Brokeback Mountain, and Ledger's status as the pansexual art-house heartthrob of the season will only be enhanced by this nimble performance. Whereas Donald Sutherland, in Fellini's Casanova back in 1976, played the man as a louche, melancholy degenerate, Ledger's version is more carefree and less complicated. He speaks softly, squares his shoulders, and the bodices pretty much rip themselvesToday. (One virginal young lady is so overcome by his manly good looks that she reduces a bird cage to splinters.)

But the doge of Venice is under pressure from Rome to clean up his city, and so Casanova is commanded to marry or face banishment. At the same time, a spirited woman named Francesca Bruni (Sienna Miller) is rebelling against the arranged marriage that her widowed mother (Lena Olin) is forcing on her. Francesca's brother, Giovanni (Charlie Cox), is in love with the bird-cage smasher, whom Casanova is courting under an assumed name. There is a duel, and Casanova finds himself smitten -- literally! -- by Francesca's swordsmanship, as well as by her other charms.

In any case, what is on screen is a delightful respite from awards-season seriousness -- a feather film, you might say, that actually tickles.