The Ninth gate

Legendary director Roman Polanski subtly intertwines his trademark themes of gothic, supernatural excess with hints of suspense and humour to deliver a provocative and atmospheric screen adaptation of Arturo Perez Reverte’s 1993 best-selling novel, “El Club Dumas”. Unscrupulous rare book broker Dean Corso gets more than he has bargained for after he is hired by multimillionaire Boris Balkan to authenticate a volume of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a priceless seventeenth century occult text whose woodcut images, when assembled correctly, are rumoured to have the power to summon the Devil. Dispatched to Europe to hunt down the only two other copies known to exist, Corso soon finds himself enmeshed in a mystery of epic proportions as he follows a trail of clues, encounters eccentric bibliophiles, is relentlessly pursued by a widening circle of deadly foes and is rescued by an enigmatic and ubiquitous green-eyed beauty. As the people he has been dealing with in relation to the book begin to die under bizarre circumstances, Corso must locate the missing images, both to save his own skin and to resolve his own growing obsession with the arcane legend of the book. Stars Johnny Depp as Corso, Frank Langella as Boris Balkan, Lena Olin as Liana Telfer, and Emmanuelle Seigner as The Girl.