When the company's 87-year-old proprietor learns that a muckraking local weekly is about to run a scathing article about a company employee, a beautiful Russian with a long swan-like neck and delicate Tartar eyes, who was killed by a suicide-bomber and whose body remains unclaimed, he directs the human-resources manager to find out what happened and to make amends, no matter what the cost.

ECONOMIST: New fiction

Kristian Fredrikson's costumes put Ms Blanchett in ravishing, long turn-of-the-century gowns that make the most of her endless yards of torso, spidery arms and almost inhuman swan neck.

ECONOMIST: Captivating as Hedda Gabler