AFTER she wraps up jury duty con Monday, Greta Scacchi takes a break before coming to Ireland to co-star in The Serpent's Kiss with the ubiquitous Ewan McGregor, who has three movies in Cannes: Trainspotting, The Pillow Book and Emma. One of the three producers of The Serpent's Kiss is Robert Jones, who last year produced The Usual Suspects, and he says that the film, which is set in 1699, is "original, a mystery, a love story, something that can be taken at many different levels".
The story deals with a craftsman who falls in love with both the wife and daughter of his employer, and the film will mark the directing debut of Philippe Rousellot, the Oscar-winning lighting cameraman who previously worked in Ireland on Neil Jordan's The Miracle. Coincidentally, both Rousellot's film and Neil Jordan's next project, The Butcher Boy, start shooting in Ireland on the same date, July 1st.
Among the other projects announced at Cannes and bound for shooting in Ireland are Guests Of The Nation, adapted and to be directed by Shane Connaughton; a BBC Films production of Dermot Bolger's A Second Life and Nigel Hawthorne in Waking Ned Devine, the story of Irish villagers conspiring to convince the authorities that a dead man with a winning lottery ticket is still alive, so that everyone in the village can share in the jackpot.