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Simply A Masterpiece

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Plot: A French noblewoman must choose between love and duty.This is an excellent if over-long film based on an old novella by Madame de La Fayette and set in the ultra-bloody 16th century Wars of Religion. Whilst the director (Tavernier) has said that he is exploring the way in which women during this period were treated as chattel, the source material actually offers a much more interesting theme. The novella and this story is really an excellent moral fable about the need for a noblewoman to place duty above feelings; it becomes a tragedy when she chooses love (really lust) instead, thereby destroying her marriage and her mentor. What's particularly nice is how the characters confound cliché: the husband in the arranged marriage might be weak but he's also good-hearted and tries to make the marriage work; the clever mentor who falls in love with her accepts that his duty means he must suppress his emotions; the foppish prince actually proves to be the most sensible character; and the dashing lover turns out to be a cad with only one thing on his mind. The acting, costumes and photography are all excellent but at nearly two and a half hours the film is far too long. It also assumes a level of historical knowledge that not all audiences will have (if you don't know who Admiral Coligny is, get reading). Finally, whilst it starts with a corking action scene (which isn't typical), the later battle scenes are small, confusing and badly choreographed.

Some of the best things in this lusciously mounted historical ramble are the battle and fight sequences. They are exciting and convincing, as is the picture's milieu. Some of the relationships sporadically command interest,despite the central character consistently failing to provide any spark. The Duke of Anjou is the most watchable; a wonderfully slimy character, whose complicated duplicity and arrogance is highly entertaining. The actress who plays the princess may have superficially attractive qualities, but she has no personality. She's a sponge, who gives almost nothing and inspires only restlessness and tedium. Had she been at least interesting this may well have been an exciting film. After a while this viewer couldn't care less what happened to her. A shame because everything around her is designed to make for a stimulating story. It should be shorter, and it should be re-cast. The real princess was supposed to be a beauty. Mlle Thierry is quite good looking, but I suppose, at the time of going into production there wasn't an available attractive actress who is also vivacious, and/or interesting, and not too expensive. Heigh ho.

The Princess is sumptuously filmed, with a great eye for setting and costume. The eponymous princess is very well acted. So why is there a slight air of disappointment when you get to the end. Partly it is because her husband and the pretty boy who would be her lover, are just a trifle wooden; the great weakness though is the fight scenes. They are filmed well but lack credibility. You can sense the rehearsals and guess what will happen next. The battle scenes are just confusing, not in the fog of war sense, but in having no explanation why a soldier would jump off an unwounded horse to fight on the ground. It may have looked exciting, marginally, but verged on the ridiculous. That aside, the story bounds along quite well and will take your mind off the next banking crisis.

Bertrand Tavernier makes excellent 'modern' films such as Round Midnight, Holy Lola, etc but clearly he has a weakness for 'costume' drama witness La Fille d'Artagnan, etc and now here he is at it again with his take on the Hugenots and the whole Catholic/Protestant set-up, a sort of French Wars of The Roses that you're not going to make much sense of unless you're a French History student/scholar. It's undeniably sumptuous, spectacular, well photographed and boasts two excellent actors in Lambert Wilson and Michel Vuillermoz but having said that we have to add that it also features Gaspar Ulliel, one of the 'new' breed of sullen, pouty, French actors on the order of Romain Duris, both of whom are guaranteed to make me run a mile in the opposite direction unless there is a writer, director, or other actors I admire as there was here in Wilson and Vuillermoz. One viewing is more than sufficient.