Directed by Carlos Saura. Starring Lorenzo Balducci and Lino Guanciale. In Italian with English subtitles. Unrated. Plays Friday to Thursday, December 17 to 23, and Tuesday, December 28, at the Vancity Theatre

Having recently expanded our grasp of Portuguese soul music in Fados, veteran Spanish director Carlos Saura—now almost 78—dramatizes the relationship between music, the Catholic Church, and good old nondenominational lust.

In a screenplay Saura wrote with two others, I, Don Giovanni begins in Venice, circa the 1770s, with converted Jew Lorenzo da Ponte (Lorenzo Balducci) working hard as a priest, womanizer, and writer of anticlerical tracts. Things were different back then. He actually expects the Italian Inquisition, however, and flees to more genteel Vienna, where there’s a rage for all things Italian.

That is certainly to an Italianate audience’s advantage, since no one in Austria appears to speak German—not even composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Young Mozart (Lino Guanciale) gives his word-wise visitor a shot as librettist, although the film jumps right over their success with The Marriage of Figaro in order to dwell on the challenges of their titular opus.

These clever operators are handed routine obstacles, including money trouble (of course) and frequently duelling divas. Da Ponte also struggles to separate himself from mentor Casanova, and he finds himself wanting to change his licentious ways when he meets a curly haired beauty straight outta Botticelli.

Said chaste maiden (Emilia Verginelli) and our pale-skinned protagonist look good together, like escapees from a vampire movie for Italian teens. And the whole thing is given a sumptuous gloss by Vittorio Storaro, cinematographer of such items as The Sheltering Sky and Apocalypse Now. Artificiality is pretty much the point here, and if it doesn’t make the famous opera any more meaningful, it is at least music to the eyes.