This beautifully-photographed Canadian film is a cross between The Mission and Dances With Wolves: a sort of Dances With Moose, perhaps. Those films showed how to portray early communion with native inhabitants as exciting, enthralling cinema. Bruce Beresford's film, while shimmering to look at and earnest of intent, shows how all too easy it is to bore your audience stiff with the same subject matter. There's lots of mud and snow and the atmosphere of primitivism is quite well caught. Only occasionally, however, does the story catch fire: a scene in which the Lothaire Bluteau as the Jesuit priest (the black robe of the title) translates writing for native Indians who have never seen it, is one of the few to generate genuine warmth and interest, and afford brief amusement.

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