Rough Magic

This article is about the film. For the book, see Lara Prior-Palmer.

Rough Magic is a 1995 comedy film directed by Clare Peploe, starring Bridget Fonda and Russell Crowe. The screenplay was written by Robert Mundi, William Brookfield, and Clare Peploe. Rough Magic is based on the 1944 novel Miss Shumway Waves a Wand by British novelist James Hadley Chase; that novel had previously been adapted as the 1962 French-Argentine film Une blonde comme ça.

Rough Magic
Directed by	Clare Peploe
Screenplay by	Robert Mundi William Brookfield Clare Peploe
Based on	Miss Shumway Waves a Wand by James Hadley Chase
Starring	Bridget Fonda Russell Crowe Jim Broadbent D. W. Moffett Paul Rodriguez
Cinematography	John J. Campbell
Edited by	Suzanne Hartley
Music by	Richard Hartley
Production company	Recorded Picture Company
Distributed by	Goldwyn Entertainment Company
Release date	May 30, 1997 (1997-05-30)
Running time	104 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$598,981

Cast

• Bridget Fonda as Myra Shumway
• Russell Crowe as Alex Ross
• Jim Broadbent as Doc Ansell
• Kenneth Mars as Magician
• D. W. Moffett as Cliff Wyatt
• Paul Rodriguez as Diego

Production

Filming locations in Michoacán, Mexico; Tikal, Guatemala; and Los Angeles, United States.

Release

The film was released in France on August 30, 1995 and in the United States on May 30, 1997.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 25% of 8 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.6/10.

Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film 2 stars, writing:

Peploe, who is married to Bernardo Bertolucci, co-wrote his Luna (1979) and Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970), and has directed one previous feature, High Season (1987), an engagingly goofy comedy set on a Greek island and involving tourists and spies. Nothing she has done before is anything like Rough Magic, which seems to be a visitor from a parallel timeline: If film noir had developed in South America instead of California, maybe we would have seen more films like this.

Apart from anything else, the movie is wonderful to look at. It's a cliche to talk about great visuals, since if you point a camera in the right direction you can make almost anything look good. But John J. Campbell and Peploe create painterly compositions with rich Mexican colors, and there are landscape shots and atmospheric effects here that are astonishing.

External links

• Rough Magic at IMDb