La reine Margot (1994)
Country: FR/IT/GER
Technical: col 162m
Director: Patrice Chéreau
Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, Vincent Perez, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Pascal Greggory, Virna Lisi, Jean-Claude Brialy
Synopsis:
1572: The would-be power behind the throne, Catherine de Médicis, arranges a marriage between her daughter, Marguerite de Valois, and Henri de Bourbon de Navarre, a protestant, with the aim of cementing the balance of power between Catholics and protestants within the kingdom, and thereby strengthen France's position on the European stage. Meanwhile Coligny, King Charles IX's mentor and éminence grise, and representative of all protestants in France, wants to mount an expedition to Flanders and challenge the power of Charles I of Spain. The queen fears this will bring forth a humiliating defeat and ruin her well-staged show of reconciliation by allying her with the English and alienating her from Catholics at home. So she arranges Coligny's assassination, which having misfired sets in chain a 'blood will have blood' escalation of Shakespearian proportions. Meanwhile a protestant and a Catholic become mortal enemies and then firm friends.
Review:
Full-blooded, lavishly produced piece of 'cinéma de patrimoine', with some fine acting talent in harness and an oddly French degree of frankness about the sexual shenanigans that went on behind the scenes. It successfully adumbrates the degree of moral turpitude and political paranoia that obtained towards the end of the Valois dynasty's hold on power, albeit with a hysterical commitment which at times verges on melodrama, and the music sets the spine tingling and the blood racing. Even so, by the end the ghoulishness becomes unremitting and strangely numbing, so that one almost misses the elegiac conclusion straight out of Stendhal.
Country: FR/IT/GER
Technical: col 162m
Director: Patrice Chéreau
Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, Vincent Perez, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Pascal Greggory, Virna Lisi, Jean-Claude Brialy
Synopsis:
1572: The would-be power behind the throne, Catherine de Médicis, arranges a marriage between her daughter, Marguerite de Valois, and Henri de Bourbon de Navarre, a protestant, with the aim of cementing the balance of power between Catholics and protestants within the kingdom, and thereby strengthen France's position on the European stage. Meanwhile Coligny, King Charles IX's mentor and éminence grise, and representative of all protestants in France, wants to mount an expedition to Flanders and challenge the power of Charles I of Spain. The queen fears this will bring forth a humiliating defeat and ruin her well-staged show of reconciliation by allying her with the English and alienating her from Catholics at home. So she arranges Coligny's assassination, which having misfired sets in chain a 'blood will have blood' escalation of Shakespearian proportions. Meanwhile a protestant and a Catholic become mortal enemies and then firm friends.
Review:
Full-blooded, lavishly produced piece of 'cinéma de patrimoine', with some fine acting talent in harness and an oddly French degree of frankness about the sexual shenanigans that went on behind the scenes. It successfully adumbrates the degree of moral turpitude and political paranoia that obtained towards the end of the Valois dynasty's hold on power, albeit with a hysterical commitment which at times verges on melodrama, and the music sets the spine tingling and the blood racing. Even so, by the end the ghoulishness becomes unremitting and strangely numbing, so that one almost misses the elegiac conclusion straight out of Stendhal.
Country: FR/IT/GER
Technical: col 162m
Director: Patrice Chéreau
Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, Vincent Perez, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Pascal Greggory, Virna Lisi, Jean-Claude Brialy
Synopsis:
1572: The would-be power behind the throne, Catherine de Médicis, arranges a marriage between her daughter, Marguerite de Valois, and Henri de Bourbon de Navarre, a protestant, with the aim of cementing the balance of power between Catholics and protestants within the kingdom, and thereby strengthen France's position on the European stage. Meanwhile Coligny, King Charles IX's mentor and éminence grise, and representative of all protestants in France, wants to mount an expedition to Flanders and challenge the power of Charles I of Spain. The queen fears this will bring forth a humiliating defeat and ruin her well-staged show of reconciliation by allying her with the English and alienating her from Catholics at home. So she arranges Coligny's assassination, which having misfired sets in chain a 'blood will have blood' escalation of Shakespearian proportions. Meanwhile a protestant and a Catholic become mortal enemies and then firm friends.
Review:
Full-blooded, lavishly produced piece of 'cinéma de patrimoine', with some fine acting talent in harness and an oddly French degree of frankness about the sexual shenanigans that went on behind the scenes. It successfully adumbrates the degree of moral turpitude and political paranoia that obtained towards the end of the Valois dynasty's hold on power, albeit with a hysterical commitment which at times verges on melodrama, and the music sets the spine tingling and the blood racing. Even so, by the end the ghoulishness becomes unremitting and strangely numbing, so that one almost misses the elegiac conclusion straight out of Stendhal.