A LITTLE CHAOS
DIRECTOR: Alan Rickman
CAST: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alan Rickman, Helen McCrory, Stanley Tucci and Jennifer Ehle
CLASSIFICATION: 13 S
RUNNING TIME: 113 minutes
RATING: ***
OTT wigs meet florid bows in the garden in this little crowd-pleaser. Alan Rickman creates a sweet, charming period piece off an anachronistic but committed, beautifully directed performance from Kate Winslet.
She is fictional landscape gardener Sabine de Barra who helps André le Notre (Schoenaerts), the real designer of the famed gardens around the palace at Versailles, and finds love along the way.
She is well supported by Rickman as King Louis XIV of France and Tucci as his brother, Phillipe, Duc d’Orleans.
Everyone sticks to English though, which jars slightly with the supposedly French story about class barriers. This seems to hamper Schoenaerts the most as De Barra’s love interest, as he comes across as more grave and stiff than dignified (three films later, by the time he made Far From the Madding Crowd, he was much more comfortable with the language).
De Barra is a woman in a man’s world who brings a little chaos to the orderly world of Le Notre, landscaper to the Sun King who runs a very regimented and ordered court.
Rickman is loving the costumes, arching his eyebrows at all and sundry and ordering the world to be how he likes it and Tucci is the surprisingly real and human touch at a court where everyone over-acts their very specific and confining roles.
De Barra runs across all sorts of problems as she tries to finish her fountain garden on time and on budget and this part of the story is predictable, as is our supposition that she and Le Notre are going to end up together.
But, Winslet’s slow unfolding of her character’s motivations and story is compelling and her character’s honest reaction to the people she meets unveils some surprising moments. When she is finally officially presented to the king, a quiet moment spent alone with the women of the court gives us a poignant scene in which they discard the masks and candidly discuss their dead children. This one scene more vividly paints a picture of what 17th-century life would have been like for aristrocratic women than the rest of the film does for all the people altogether.
There are funny moments, lots of melodrama and heaving bosoms and even some romance and villainy, but ultimately A Little Chaos doesn’t quite become more than the sum of its admittedly finely drawn parts.
It is entertaining and visually engaging – between the lush gardens, even more lush costumes and buildings, there is more than enough to draw the eye. But imposing a modern feel on what is supposed to be a story set more than 300 years ago doesn’t quite work. Somehow a modern dramatic sensibility in this context means there is no edge or thrill.
If you liked Marie Antoinette, you will like this.