Barney's version

Hungarian-born Uruguay-raised Canadian producer Robert Lantos boasts a fascinating track record of more than 30 movies since 1977. His second feature was an adaptation of the best-selling Hungarian novel In Praise of Older Women, filmed in Quebec. Canada's most successful indie producer, Lantos took 12 years to get his latest literary endeavour onto the screen: Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version.

Published in 1997, it was the Montrealer's final novel. He died in 2001, after a busy life crafting books, newspaper columns and socio-political controversies. Some critics saw his Barney, a larger-than-life Montreal Jew coping with untimely passion, irksome relatives and ageing, as a self-portrait. Much of Richler's writing was inspired by his upbringing, and debutant screenplaywright Michael Konyves captures the bitter-sweet community spirit of Anglophone Jewish Montrealers, a minority within a minority in the province.

Barney belongs to a further minority, of working-class Jews scorned by the city's upper class of Jewish "old money". His father is a lovably gauche cop (Dustin Hoffman contributing a delicately rowdy cameo that doesn't chew Giamatti's scenery), while the uncle who employs him is an embarrassingly abrupt Zionist squeezing funds for Israel. Barney runs the uncle's TV production company ("Totally Unnecessary Productions"), churning out soap operas, and one wonders why rich snobs allow their Master's Degree-holding daughter to marry Barney, and why she chose him in the first place.

Minnie Driver provides grotesquely convincing images of a bossy Jewish princess, and it's easy to imagine why Barney falls hopelessly in love with beautifully clever Miriam Grant at his painfully funny wedding party. It's never stated that she is also Jewish, and the role of perfect womanhood is a gift for English actress Rosamund Pike, whose shimmering eyes express a thousand words her dialogue doesn't include. Why she chooses babyish Barney is also a mystery to behold. He has neither the wit or charm of Woody Allen's equally egocentric characters.

It's easier to see why Jews would scorn Richler's writings and shun the movie. No anti-Semite would be allowed to create such enchantingly despicable, stereotypically Jewish personalities. To some, this movie may be hurtful satire that could only have been produced by Canadians. Barney is a much cruder and crueller version of Portnoy, and Irish-Italian Giamatti looks and acts the part of Barney well, winning the 2011 Best Comedy Actor Golden Globe (yes, the competition was slim that year).

Producer Lantos (and co-producers including his son Ari) have so far earned only a teeny fraction of the movie's $30 million budget at the North American box office. He does have the respect of his adopted homeland's top film directors: five of them took bit parts, and another Canadian talent, Richard C. Lewis (a CSI writer-director for seven years) directed the movie with stylish pace.

Admirably, the production left Barney in his native Montreal and made no attempt to Americanise the plot or its characters in order to satisfy audiences south of the Canadian border. Other members of the cast are also home-produced Canadian talents: UK-born Scott (Underworld) Speedman, German-born Saul Rubinek, and Quebecers Bruce Greenwood and Anna Hopkins. Although Jake Hoffman (son of Dustin) takes the role of Barney's son (very ably), this movie is mostly a very likeable advert for Canadian cinema.