Too many grotesques almost spoil the broth in this impressively made film version of Umberto Eco's massive best-seller. And the motivation and resolution of the murders that plague an isolated 14th century Italian monastery are never quite sharp enough to focus our attention whole-heartedly on a story that struggles manfully to pull its disparate elements together. Sean Connery is admittedly a great help as the investigator, a sort of Franciscan Sherlock Holmes (a foreunner of Derek Jacobi's Cadfael); Christian Slater has an early role as his young assistant; and production designer Dante Ferretti deserves high praise for his amazing monastery, with its clutter of medieval bric-a-brac and the labyrinth that lies within its tower. Visually memorable then, if dramatically dense, the film is on the whole an enjoyable experience.


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