Dangerous Beauty

Marshall Herskovitz directed this look at life in 16th-century Venice, based on Margaret Rosenthal's 1994 book -The Honest Courtesan. Positioned outside of the Venetian court, Veronica Franco (Catherine McCormack) hopes to rise above her station, but her interest in nobleman's son Marco Venier ...more

Catherine McCormack makes a ravishing lead in this costume drama that suffers somewhat from the incidental and fractured quality common to period costume dramas based largely on historical fact. A little more poetic license might have smoothed out the rough edges of this sophomore directorial effort from television producer Marshall Herskovitz. In particular, the antagonist character Maffio Venier (played with gusto by Oliver Platt) seems only to appear when the script calls for him to move a ...more