Verdict: A sweeping symphony, with some parts better than others.

Details: Starring Samuel L. Jackson. Directed by Francois Girard. Not rated, but contains nudity and sexuality. 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Review: Francois Girard's best-known movie, 1993's "Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould," was as playful, spare and sophisticated as his most recent one, "The Red Violin," is florid, expansive and emotional.

A centuries-spanning saga, it follows the fortunes — and, more often, misfortunes — of those who come into contact with a violin carved in 1681 by an Italian master named Bussotti (Carlo Cecchi).

First, Girard establishes an intriguing framing device. We begin in the present, where, at a chichi Montreal auction house, a Stradivarius knocked down for $1.9 million is merely the second most important piece being offered. The "star of the evening," as the auctioneer says, is the so-called Red Violin, an instrument so perfectly conceived that an expert (Samuel L. Jackson) called in to authenticate the items has become obsessed with it.

Actually, the auction isn't the only framing device. Skip back three centuries to Italy, where an ancient servant is reading the tarot cards for her mistress, Anna (Irene Grazioli), Bussotti's very lovely and very pregnant wife. But is it the woman's future being read--or that of the violin her husband is so feverishly trying to finish before the birth of their child?

From there, the Red Violin wends its way from hand to hand, from country to country. It finds a home at a 17th-century Austrian monastery, where it's picked up by an orphaned prodigy. It also ends up with Gypsies, thieves and between the naked legs of Frederick Pope (Jason Flemyng), a 19th-century British virtuoso whose tempestuous affair with a Victorian author (Greta Scacchi) is one of the sillier segments. Pope's Chinese manservant (Stuart Ong) returns to his homeland with the instrument, where, several decades later, the Red Violin collides with Mao's Cultural Revolution before landing in Montreal, where Jackson finally unravels its tragic secret.

The different stories vary in quality, from the near-sublime (the Italian section) to the ridiculous (the aforementioned Pope pulp). But the one thing that remains constant is the inherent intrigue of Girard's central conceit. The Red Violin is as much seeker as sought. There are those through whose hands it passes without leaving a mark. But there are also those for whom the violin is a destiny in waiting.

Using an inanimate object to tie together a series of short stories was once a hugely popular construct. In the 1940s, "Tales of Manhattan" followed a tailcoat. In the '60s, it was "The Yellow Rolls Royce." But underneath this familiar structure, there's a surprising ferocity. The violin's secret creates, not a curse necessarily, but a fate. It's a bit like Michael Powell's 1948 ballet wonder "The Red Shoes," a reminder of the unquenchable chaos that flirts with all true artists. To forestall the outraged e-mail, no, "The Red Violin" is not a masterpiece like "The Red Shoes," but its power comes from a similar impulse: an attempt to understand the creative/destructive fulcrum in which artistic genius resides.

"The Red Violin" will be too melodramatic for some tastes, too schematic for others. But anyone who's ever felt a chill at the revelations of an overturned tarot card will hear this film's inner music.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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