Queen Margot (La Reine Margot)Rating:
Release Date: 01 July, 2003 Retail Price: $14.99 OUR Price: $11.99 You SAVE: $3.00! Cast: Complete Cast (12 total) |
Queen Margot (La Reine Margot) Reviews
history with healthy doses of lust, intrigue, & brutality
From a story by Alexander Dumas, the famous nineteenth century Afro-French writer (Count of Monte Cristo, Man in the Iron Mask, Three Musketeers, etc). I actually came upon this film only because it had Jean-Hughes Anglade from Nikita and Killing Zoe. He is wonderful but the real scene stealer is Isabelle Adjani! You would never have noticed that she was well over 38 years old when then film was made, she looks so much better than she did 16 years earlier in Herzog's Nosferatu remake. Adjani is absolutely captivating, she has a screen presence that can only be compared to the likes of Ingrid Bergman or Gong Li. If you really like her, check out Camille Claudel which is probably her only other really good film.
La Reine Margot is a luscious political adventure set around the event of the terrible true-to-life St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572. The supporting cast, including Anglade as Charles IX, and Vincent Perez as Adjani's lover La Mole, is consistently superb. If you haven't seen this, you are definitely missing out. La Reine Margot probably helped to influence the similar medieval themed queen epics Elizabeth (1998, UK) and Suriyothai (2001, Thailand), both of which should definitely be checked out if you enjoyed this one. One of the best films of the 1990s.
Not a Dull Moment
This movie begins with the wedding in 1572 of Margaret (Margot) of Valois, sister of the French king Charles IX, to the Protestant Henry of Navarre. The wedding is supposed to heal the rift between Catholics and Protestants but Margaret's family soon have other ideas and while Paris is still awash with Protestant visitors up for the wedding, her mother Catherine de Medici, her brothers and her lover Guise order the terrible slaughter of Protestants now known as the St Bartholemew's Day Massacre. The first hour of this film builds up to this event. The rest deals with the fall-out as Margaret, appalled by the massacre, allies herself to the Protestant cause and seeks to help both her new husband and her new lover La Mole, whom she has saved from the general slaughter, to prevail against the schemings of her own dreadful family.
This is a hugely melodramatic film based on a romantic novel by Dumas so it probably is not the most reliable way of informing yourself about 16th century France. But that doesn't stop it being enormous fun. The atmosphere of the French court, a decadent milieu where promiscuity, adultery and incest are so normal as barely to excite comment, thick with plotting and intrigue, is deliciously presented and the romance of the love affair between Margaret and La Mole is carried off with gripping panache. The acting is excellent. Adjani, Auteuil and Perez are excellent in the main roles of Margot, Navarre and La Mole. Jean-Hughes Anglade is magnificently ' sometimes hilariously ' over the top as a weak and unstable Charles IX. and the show is more or less stolen by Virna Lisi as a splendidly evil Catherine de Medici, creeping around the place like Max Schreck's Count Orlok, never happy unless she is plotting the death of another of her many enemies. Melodramatic historical hokum mainly but it's hard to think of another recent film that does the melodramatic historical hokum thing half so well. If you want to spend two hours being as just far as possible from bored, this is a reliable prescription.
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