It premiered in the Gala section at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2024, and was theatrically released on December 6, 2024, in the United States by Bleecker Street. It was released in the UK and Ireland on April 11, 2025 by Modern Films, with event screenings in advance at the British Museum on April 9 and Curzon Mayfair on April 10.
Plot
Twenty years after fighting in the Trojan War and journeying back home, Odysseus washes up naked on the shores of his home island Ithaca. He is tended to by Eumaeus and Yias. Odysseus is dispirited and traumatized by the war and learns about the decline of his kingdom.
Odysseus' wife Penelope is facing pressure to find a suitor, given the continued absence of her husband and the decline of the kingdom since Odysseus left for the war. Her son Telemachus is approached by Antinous, who attempts to convince him to press Penelope into marriage. The young man refuses, distrusting Antinous and also the other suitors.
Meanwhile, Penelope weaves her elderly father-in-law's burial shroud before his impending death. Telemachus asks her to take a suitor to end the chaos, but she refuses until she completes the shroud. Odysseus' father dies; the suitors press Penelope to marry, while insisting that Odysseus is also dead. She says she will make the shroud her wedding gown, and that she will choose a suitor soon.
Meanwhile, Eumaeus takes Odysseus to the palace, where his dog Argos recognizes his master after a long wait and then dies. Odysseus disguises himself as an old soldier and begs for food; the suitors abuse him. They force him to fight a huge man, but Odysseus kills him. Suspicious, Penelope speaks to Odysseus, but ends up ordering him to be tended to and sent off after he refuses to answer her questions.
Odysseus' old nursemaid Eurycleia however discovers his identity while bathing him, after recognizing a scar on the back of his leg. He bids her be silent. Soon afterwards, Telemachus is hunted by the suitors to silence any interference with the marriage, but Odysseus saves him.
Odysseus, Telemachus, Eumaeus and their friends flee behind a pool of water, which throws the hounds off their scent. When Odysseus' identity is revealed, Telemachus is infuriated with his father, accusing him of abandoning him and his mother in Ithaca. He laments Odysseus' failure to bring the Ithacan warriors home, but ultimately resigns himself to it.
Antinous discovers Penelope unraveling her weaving at night and forces her to make a decision. Odysseus' crew hears that Penelope will make a decision the next day. They go to the palace where Penelope tells the suitors that her choice is to make them compete with Odysseus' old bow, seeing if they can shoot an arrow through the holes of multiple axe heads, as he did. The successful suitor will win her hand in marriage. None of the suitors can even string the bow.
Odysseus offers to try, strings it, and shoots the arrow through the axe heads. He then shoots the suitors as the royal servants close the doors to prevent escape. When his arrows run out, Odysseus relentlessly kills the suitors by hand. Telemachus is tempted to flee, but he helps his father fight. Antinous surrenders, and Penelope, desirous of peace and tired of the violence, bids Telemachus let him live. Telemachus kills the man and horrifies his mother.
Telemachus insists on sailing off to find himself and his destiny. Odysseus notices that Penelope is using an unfamiliar bed. He goes to a hidden upper-level room and finds their old bed, which she had sealed away after he left. Odysseus and Penelope reconcile with each other and offer to share their past years to move on with their future together.
The project was announced in April 2022. The script for the film was written by John Collee and Edward Bond. The film's director, Uberto Pasolini, and James Clayton produced the film.[5] Pasolini said he had been considering adapting Homer's Odyssey for 30 years; he asked Fiennes to act and direct in 2011. Fiennes said he couldn't do both, and in 2022 asked Pasolini to direct, accepting only when Fiennes pushed him. Pasolini asked Fiennes who should play Penelope, and Fiennes replied "Juliette [Binoche], of course".[6] The film marks the third time Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche have appeared together following 1992's Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and the 1996 Oscar winner The English Patient.[7]
HanWay Films began handling international sales and took the project to the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.[5] In February 2023 Bleecker Street picked up North American rights and appointed Andrew Karpen and Kent Sanderson as executive producers. Roberto Sessa for Picomedia with Rai Cinema, Giorgos Karnavas and Konstantinos Kontovravkis for Heretic and Stéphane Moatti, Romain Le Grand, Vivien Aslanian and Marco Pacchioni for Kabo Films and Marvelous Production were producers on the Italy-Greece-U.K.-France co-production.[8]
Filming
The film began production in Greece in the spring of 2023, with principal photography in the regions of Corfu and the Peloponnese, before continuing on to locations in Italy.[9] Filming had wrapped in Corfu by June 2023.[10] Other scenes were shot in the country to the north of Rome. The total cost of filming was $20m, compared to the $250m spent on Christopher Nolan's 2026 The Odyssey.[6]
Music
The music for The Return was composed by Rachel Portman and performed by Roma Film Orchestra, conducted by Emanuele Bossi. It was released on Digital Records.[11]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 78% of 85 critics' reviews are positive.The website's consensus reads: "The Return removes the mythology from Odysseus' homecoming along with some of the fun, but Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche's terrific performances keep this drama absorbing."[16]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[17]
Katie Walsh in the Los Angeles Times calls the movie "an acting showcase",[18] with Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times also praising strong performances by Fiennes and Binoche.[19] Reviewers, including Corey Atad in the Toronto Star, noted the Shakespearean quality of the drama.[20]
Analysis
Pasolini chose to omit all the gods and mythical beings from his film, such as the sirens (pictured: Odysseus listening to the Sirens, 5th century BC vase painting) of Homer's poem.
The production lacks any of the gods of Homer's poem, according to Pasolini. There are further no monsters or mythical beings such as the Cyclops and sirens, in contrast to Nolan's film.[6] Pasolini said that his Odysseus had to feel that the guilt and pain from the siege of Troy and the deaths of his companions "was his own doing".[6] Fiennes did physical training for five months to acquire the wiry and muscular body that Pasolini wanted for Odysseus, followed by 2+1⁄2 months of running and weight training to reduce his body fat as far as possible. Odysseus's body was intended to look "like a bit of old rope" rather than a "gym body", in Fiennes' words.[6]
Ben Nicholson, reviewing for the British Film Institute, writes that the film reworks only the second half of the poem, omitting all the "famous wanderings" and the adventures with the siren's songs, blinding the Cyclops, or having his men turned into pigs by the enchantress Circe. In his view, leaving out all the "supernatural winds" and mythical beings permits Pasolini to tell the tale realistically and foregrounds the characters' psychology. He finds both the narrative and the filmmaking "stripped back", with "elegant and understated" cinematography. The result, writes Nicholson, is a "nuanced psychological drama" that takes an unflinching look at the story, providing "gripping" cinema.[21] Ian Haydn Smith, for the International Film Festival Rotterdam, describes the film as an "emotionally intense drama, rapturously shot by Marius Panduru". He finds Fiennes's subtle acting and physical transformation equally remarkable, ably matched by Binoche "at her most incandescent".[22]
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