Homeric Thunder with a thrilling face-off between Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche

While movie theaters are expected to be filled with epic and floods of spectators during the summer of 2026 thanks to the version ofOdyssey directed by Christopher Nolan, the public can calm their impatience by going to see The Return of Ulysses, an intimate portrait of the return to Ithaca of the Homeric hero, who, despite the film's Spanish title, is called Odysseus in the film, following the Greek tradition. Director Uberto Pasolini, best known for producing the British comedy The Full Monty, pulls a promising cinephile lure out of his sleeve: to see again Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche starring in a romantic drama three decades after Wuthering Heights (1992) and The English patient (1997). In the film, Penelope has been waiting for Odysseus for 20 years and, despite remaining faithful to her husband, a growing resentment and the decline of Ithaca have tarnished the queen's marital devotion.

In this narrative context, Pasolini routinely applies the distinctive features of mythological fiction in the age of Game of Thunder, from the television staging to the emphatic soundtrack, the touches of eroticism and a certain exaltation of ethnic diversity. What is not routine is the tête à tête between Fiennes and Binoche, who play with restrained emotion an Odysseus consumed by guilt and remorse and a Penelope dismayed by the barbarity of men. In the best scenes, The Return of Ulysses It becomes a somber chamber piece in which the pair denounce the brutal and expansive destructive force of war. When a subject reproaches Odysseus for saying the Trojan War is a thing of the past, the hero replies: "War is everywhere. It is what we see and touch." A comment that has a chillingly contemporary resonance.