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'Casanova' reels in lovers — and laughs

As a showcase of his versatility, you could hardly find two performances as different as Heath Ledger's laconic, repressed Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain and his wily, randy title character in Casanova. If the former is destined to be seen as his acting breakthrough, the latter is surely enough to turn him into an A-list movie star.

Touchstone Pictures 'Casanova' B+ The verdict: A giddy romp throughout Venice with Ledger in a breezy star turn as the fabled 18th-century lover. Director: Lasse Hallstrom Starring: Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Lena Olin, Oliver Platt Run time: 108 minutes Release date: Jan. 6, 2006 Rating: R for some sexual content. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Casanova'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Giacomo Casanova, fabled 18th-century swordsman and possessor of other phallic skills, has been depicted on screen by actors as diverse as Bob Hope, Donald Sutherland and Bela Lugosi. As a folk hero of his day, he was variously an author, politician, lawyer and professional heretic, but all of that has taken a back seat to tales of his sexual appetite and prowess with women. If there had been no Casanova, surely Hollywood would have invented him.

The latest spin on his exploits comes from director Lasse Hallstrom, who sheds the dour mantle of The Shipping News and An Unfinished Life for this nimble romp throughout a storybook Venice. He is aided by an intricate, witty screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (Stage Beauty) and Kimberly Simi, plus a reported rewrite by Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love).

As Casanova eludes the clutches of the Inquisition through a series of assumed identities, he also hops from bed to bed, only to be blindsided by love to a stunning, cerebral, but anachronistic feminist (Sienna Miller of the recent Alfie) who despises everything he represents.

Casanova makes a nodding acknowledgement of history, before ignoring its limitations when they prove inconvenient. If anything, it owes a debt to the knockabout conventions of commedia dell'arte, with its broad comic stereotypes and cliffhanging perils.

The time is 1753, and Casanova is a pop hero so renowned that puppet shows all across Venice portray his exploits. Yet crucial to the film's numerous plot twists is the fact that few know what he actually looks like.

Nabbed by the church's guard for dallying in a nunnery, Casanova is offered two choices — to leave his beloved Venice forever or to marry and settle down. Meanwhile, headstrong Francesca Bruni (Miller), apparently a cousin to Portia in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, bridles from the marriage arranged by her cash-strapped widowed mother (Lena Olin) to a tubby lard mogul (Oliver Platt) from Genoa. Then there is Francesca's brother, a virginal lad who pines for the comely ingenue who lives across the canal, upon whom Casanova has set his not-completely honorable sights.

That is just the introduction to the breezy merriment that ensues, a nothing-to-be-taken-seriously farce that wends its way throughout Venice and, in a particularly delightful sequence, above the city in one of those newfangled inventions Ñ a hot-air balloon. Credit production designer David Gropman, and presumably a team of artful matte painters, for restoring the city to its period glory.

In many ways, Venice is the movie's star, or at least its scene stealer. Still, Ledger is larger-than-life, skittering across rooftops, swinging on convenient ropes for his many getaways and occasionally standing still long enough to declaim lyrically. Also adding to the film's fun is Jeremy Irons as the Vatican's henchman, the Wile E. Coyote to Casanova's Road Runner.

Casanova is surely too lightweight to be remembered much at Oscar time, but as a classy popcorn movie it works as giddily satisfying entertainment.