La princesse de Montpensier

I wanted this to be good! I spent the money! I tried to watch it several times but couldn't get into it. This movie is SO SLOW AND extremely BORING!! I want my money back! None of the characters are developed or interesting enough to pull you in. The plot is boring. Etc. sorry but don't bother

Sad because it reminds you what french cinema once was and what it could still be today. Sad also because it gets only 6 out of 10 which reminds you french cinema is not about to get better. I'm even fairly certain that if this had not been directed by Tavernier who made his notoriety in a very different time, this movie would not even have been financed. If it can be called bad, the only bad aspect of this movie is that the story isn't important nor interesting in a general way. Then again this is the usual with Tavernier and to me this is the most obvious aspect of his genius. Nowadays you give someone the billions dollars empire of Disney and the Star Wars story and they'll make unwatchable movies. While Tavernier can make an amazing movie with a banal story. Yeah, basically it's only about this girl everyone is in love with. Like the cover image shows, four men looking at one girl. If it sounds like something you'd hate, don't let prejudices prevent you from discovering this treasure. As they say, don't judge a book(or movie) by it's cover. What makes this movie so great is everything else than the story itself. Characters, dialogues, cinematography, scenery, acting, costumes, historical context and last but not least the exquisite quality of the french language. This movie is like something you'd see in the 1960s but with a modern touch. This is like this a rare bottle of wine that you will only taste once in your life and spend the rest of your life hoping you'll find the taste again. You can savor every words they say in this film, every scenes, every costumes. I could go on but seriously I was baffled at how good this movie is. The girl does a good performance, true she is not to my liking so I wasn't impressed. Yet the passion the men have for her makes the whole thing credible even if you think she's not that special. The four men after her all did an outstanding performance. Specially her husband. The husband is so good you always hope he will be in the next scene. The dialogues are smart and serious. This is a serious movie to be enjoyed by serious people or people in a serious mood. Like a good wine, this is something you give to someone who can appreciate good wine. I also liked how this movie was free of any propaganda. I didn't feel any criticism of gender roles of the time, religions, wars or nobility. There was no politically correct bias or anything. This movie was very understanding of the time it was depicting. This was so refreshing. They showed that the men were forced into marriage as the women were. As one of the character said "we pay dearly the privileges of our birth ranks". There was the Catholics against Protestants wars going on but it was merely a background story. There's no sides or ideologies or messages. The only morals you can find in this movie are morals you can apply to any place at any time. So we could say this movie is universally great. You can be absolutely certain that for example, if it could be very well dubbed in english, the anglophones would adore this movie. Even the British don't do similar drama of this era of such quality and they try very hard to. Finally, French people need to be reminded that they have a great historical, cultural and architectural heritage. In some way, like the British, you French have a duty to provide quality movies like this one. You owe it to all the "francophonie" and the rest of the world. No one else but you can do it. The state takes your money in taxes to provide vile entertainment. The least you can do when by miracle an outstanding movie like this is made is to give it a good rating... I mean how is this not a great movie for it's type ? When they make really good stuff french people don't even watch it and the rest of us french speaking people get to see it years later only to be told it didn't make money in France... I mean... Dear France, please get your **** together !!! Thanks.

I don't think it's exactly a ten star picture, it's a modest film, despite the wide-screen, but I'm giving it ten because I think it is being undervalued here for failing to be what it's not trying to be. For example, the opening sequence is pretty strange action, I guess. No blood. A bit unrealistic in a way. But then suddenly, there it is. Real blood, real pain, real horror, out of nowhere. My feeling is that the "unreal" prior action exists to make the contrast hit home hard, creating a spiritual (to call it that) turning point out of butchery as usual. It's making a point. But then I like Tavernier a lot, and I've learned to accept his way of coming at a story. Like his laid-back, almost lethargic version of Jim Thompson's brutal Pop. 1280, Coup de Torchon. The first time I saw it was frustrating; I thought he'd missed the book. Seeing it again, I just watched what was on the screen, and had a real good time. Queen Margot, this film's more romantic twin, is one of my favourite movies because it pulses with so much colour and movement and life. The Princess of Montpensier is pulsing with something else. Pulsing with limitation? I don't know. The characters are all so trapped -- in the situation, in the era, in themselves. It's more sad than full blown tragic, and in that respect perhaps truer to life as it's lived and later understood, rather than dreamed. More like a Rossellini history film, say, than a contemporary, high production values epic. Beautiful to look at and lovely to listen to though, no doubt about it. And yet, at the same time, dry (the way that wine can be) and philosophical, in the sense of resigned. A song of experience, and quietly sustained anger, that tugs at your mind rather than your heart strings. Which appealed to me. In the right mood, allowed to do it's own thing at it's own pace, it's really good. I didn't even want to return it to the library, I kept putting it off until I started getting emails.

La princesse de Montpensier – The Princess of Montpensier – CATCH IT (B-) La princesse de Montpensier is the most talked about movie of Cannas 2010. There is no doubt there is some high profile stars and director attached to the project which leads to lots of expectations. La princesse de Montpensier is a passionate story about a beautiful woman Marie de Mezières torn between her husband Prince de Montpensier and lover Henri de Guise. Her beauty and innocence also catches attention of Duc d'Anjou and Comte de Chabannes. Now she must decide whether she wants to live with her husband or passionate lover whom she cannot forget. The story and premises is really fascinating based in 16th century, France. The emotional aspects of the movie are nicely presented but the action sequences in the movie are terribly rehearsed. This is the biggest mistake of the movie that time to time it shows fight or war scenes but they are so unnatural and unreal that it makes the movie very average and close to mediocre. Mélanie Thierry is stunning and her performance as Princess of Montpensier is worth praising. Gaspard Ulliel as passionate stubborn lover is really impressive. Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet is master in playing naïve. This is his third French movie I watched and I cannot stop myself from comparing him to his previous work which is almost the same playing the role of naive boy. Raphaël Personnaz is great, his dialogues and the way he carries himself as duke is simply amazing. Lambert Wilson did a decent job though I found his scenes very boring. Overall, La princesse de Montpensier is a decent attempt in capturing the essence of love but there are many things in the movie which could have been easily improved.

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.

This is a vapid costume drama set out in the French renaissance. It features some decent cinematography, beautiful photography and gorgeous costumes. Mélanie Thierry looks incredible, almost edible in her robes of velvet satin, and the movie makers don't miss a chance to reveal her luscious forms. However, the film bursts like a bubble gum anytime you take the pain to look a bit deeper. The war scenes are totally unhistorical, with armies fighting without any battle line, like drunkards in a tavern brawl, and the top commanders hacking and slashing on the front line instead of organizing the battle from behind. Most of all, there is little character development and the main character is portrayed in a superficial, contradictory way. On one side she appears as an intelligent, considerate young woman; on the other she betrays a loving and faithful husband and dishonors her name and her family's for a fickle teenager love, after stating several times she won't ever do it. She behaves more like a 14-years-old in love with some pop star. If that's emancipation, we can surely live without it. In another unlikely scene, the husband's life-long friend, who owes him his life and fortune, betrays his trust and allows the lover in the princess' rooms, with no apparent reason and against his own expressed judgment. Watch this movie if you like flashing swords, wondrous velvets and vapid, shallow love stories with not much of a plot. Yet if you are a thinking person chances are that you won't get much out of this paltry flick.

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.

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.

I loved every frame of this romantic historical drama! The film is more about the four men (Lambert Wilson, Gregoire LePrince-Ringuet, Gaspard Ulliel and Raphael Personnaz) more than her (Melanie Thierry). Betrand Tavernier is one of the great directors of all time. The film is more leisurely than "Queen Margot", which it resembles in it's period and it's story. The editing is fluid, the costumes, the sets, the design elements are all so pleasurable and add so much - I wasn't bored for a single moment. I esp. loved the performances by all 5 lead actors. It was interesting seeing these actors in very different roles than I am used to seeing them in. The story also resembles Thomas Hardy's "Far From The Madding Crowd", but instead of 3 men there are 4. (: Yes, the politics of Catholics, Protestants and "heretics" is a bit confusing but that's always the case with these medieval movies. I assume in France they learn this in history class so they don't need the information as much as we do. But I didn't care. I was so caught up in the story and esp. the acting that I didn't need anything more. I give this film a 10 out of 10 because I wasn't bored for a single frame of the movie.