Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Lancoor A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

chaos-rampant Doing a historical film about medieval Europe is anathema. Because the only reason to set your romance in that era is to invoke some grand historicity that imbues love and suffering with larger agency, you are constrained by how simple and unimaginative is this historical narrative as handed down to us. Breath of life has been largely sucked out of it and you're left with melodramatic gestures and events, stereotyped contrasts of atmospheric squalor versus opulence, or the simple and senseless wars and counter-wars that punctuate the period as fodder of thrills - here Catholics versus Huguenot reformers.Poor Tavernier thought he could deliver something a little more rousing than this. No doubt he knew the score of clichés attached to this type of film: damsel in distress, cruel aristocrats, some tarnished nobility. Injustice above all.An ordinary period romance done a bit differently, this is his half-hearted solution. On the dramatic level, this is accomplished by introducing unexpected layers to the usual character stereotypes: the beautiful princess married off by her father for political convenience is obstinate on top of stoically-suffering, her true love destined but denied her is arrogant and manipulative, the unwanted husband maintains honor and respect in the face of humiliation.On a broader level, plots between these people in oppressive control of a nation's destiny are reflected in the wars they fight, private or otherwise. Heavenly spheres move in natural order and balance, it is mused, but the man-made order of things below is forced, bloody and treacherous. The film closes with the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, chaos and senseless murder in the streets.So a world moved by desire and ambition, centered around this woman coveted by all, that leaves all participants barren inside or worse.Like written history of the events, the film is big, brazen, flowery, rhapsodized tragedy. Red-blooded passion groomed into poetic verse. But there is no real breath in star-crossed destiny. Beauty is painterly, applied, inorganic.

writers_reign 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.

Mike_Flattley There is so much that is good about French cinema, but if you are about to see this movie, you have just wasted eighteen to thirty dollars, presuming you are either being dragged to or are dragging some sort of romantically-inclined partner, consort or comfort worker to this sorry eruption of art-house dross from the bowels of the French export industry. Like a vast wheel of mass-produced industrial brie, this inferior national product is ensconced in flag-waving packaging surrounding its bland core. "Hello, I am a French period drama," it screams, beating you with a vast stick of bread, then gets on with the pressing business of documenting the unremarkable life of some wilful yet vacuous aristocratic twit who for some reason warrants two hours of our undivided attention.For audience members with the good fortune to have escaped internment for crimes against humanity, I must question your enduring decision to watch this movie. It is a travesty of filmmaking, a cynical act of reflux by an industry that recognises anything in a period costume set in the French countryside anytime over the last millennium will attract the vapid attention of culture drones who delight in hollow, costumed eye-candy so much they need to be forcibly restrained less they mount the stage to perform lewd acts against the screen. In fact, it would be a sensible exercise in self-preservation to simply sit silently in a dark cupboard for two hours imagining this very scenario unfolding instead of watching "The Princess of Montpensier." I would caution that these are two hours you will never get back, however the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder the movie will precipitate will involve audience members reliving this experience again and again through a series of distressing flashbacks. This is not just two hours. It is a life sentence.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx My love affair with cinema started as a teenager with a chance viewing of Patrice Chéreau's La reine Margot (1994) late one night on TV. It's a lavish costume drama set at the same time as The Princess of Montpensier including some of the same characters, both with key scenes set during the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572. So this felt like a return to the beginning for me, a special occasion.I feared it may have been a wasted ticket at the start as it opens with a rather bombastic action sequence that looked too staged and was drowned by Hollywood "big music", ludicrous percussion-heavy seat-shaking stuff. Perhaps Tavernier caught a bug working in the States on In the Electric Mist. Of course such antics may be right up your street if you are a Gladiator fan. By the way I felt the first scene portrayed the Comte de Chabannes and cohorts as being too reckless with their lives, unrealistically so.However the film improved, and Chabannes cut an iconic figure in his odd Spanish hat. The film was based on the short story of the same name by Madame de La Fayette, which I definitely intend to read now.The drama concerns the Princess of Montpensier (Mélanie Thierry) who is loved by four very contrasting men. Will she choose the right one? Haha, that would not be very interesting now would it? I think it's somewhat of a breakout role for the stunning Mélanie Thierry, who has been in some potboilers as well as having a very gamine role as the passive object of Danny Boodmann T.D. Lemon Nineteen Hundred's affections in Giuseppe Tornatore's The Legend of 1900 back in 1998. She is the very essence of the type of woman that a man develops amour fou for. The best casting decision I've seen all year for sure, though it would have helped if Tavernier had been a better director of actors.I did feel there was a strange lack of pathos in the movie, I think generally a director requires actors to emote, to show what they are thinking on their faces. This is the great artifice of cinema. I've seen a few Tavernier films and I don't think he likes to get them doing that. In a way I think that makes the movie quite abstract. The plot is so sheerly powerful by itself that I was enraptured.I like the way the movie quotes the sentiments from Hebrews Chapter 11 Verse 1: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith is something that we've lost to a degree in western life, making life seem a pointless charade. Good watching. 10/10 as I'm a sentimental fool.To Claire, impertinently.