Overrated

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The French movie La reine Margot was shown in the U.S. with the translated title Queen Margot (1994). Patrice Chéreau directed the movie. Many of the events we see are historical facts, but the film is adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Dumas was aware that historical accuracy doesn't sell novels--violence, sex, and intrigue sell novels. Violence, sex, and intrigue are definitely in evidence in this movie. (Note that apparently several different DVD versions of Queen Margot are available. We saw the 144 minute version.)Isabelle Adjani portrays Marguerite de Valois, called Queen Margot. Daniel Auteuil portrays Henri of Navarre, Margot's husband. Vincent Perez plays Magot's true love, Joseph de la Môle. In an important supporting role, Virna Lisi brilliantly portrays Catherine de Medici, Margot's mother.This movie has impressive production values with (literally) a cast of thousands. Dozens of handsome people fill the screen. Sometimes they wear clothes, sometimes not. All of this works well for a historical drama. What didn't work for me was the graphic scenes during and after the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre.The massacre was a true genocide, as the film makes clear. However, for me the killings and the corpses were just too much. We expect violence in a historical drama, but we don't need to see almost 15 minutes of it.Another problem I had was in following the plot and sorting out the characters. Adjani as Margot was unmistakable. So was Auteuil as Henri. However, there must have been a dozen handsome guys with long hair who played major supporting roles. Who was the good guy? Who was the bad guy? Who was the good guy who became a bad guy and who was the bad guy who became a good guy? Hard to say.The historical Margot was 19 when she was married. Isabelle Adjani looks 19, so that wasn't a problem. The strange thing is that Adjani was 39(!) when she played the role. Adjani was born in 1955. The film was made in 1994. No matter how many times I did the math, it always came out the same. I think she is a Martian.This movie was meant for the large screen and, indeed, it was recently shown in the wonderful Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. We saw it on DVD, where it worked well enough. The reason we didn't go to the Dryden is that you can't fast forward a movie in a theater. We used fast forward for the massacre, and that was effective. So, if you like historical dramas starring beautiful ageless actors, and you can tolerate sustained scenes of violence, this movie will work for you. If not, probably better to stay away.P.S. On our DVD player, the violent massacre lasted from the 47-minute point to the 60-minute point. It was at 47 minutes that we hit fast forward.

If you are not familiar with the French history, this movie may be a little painful to you. As for me, I spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with all those characters and events so that refrained myself from getting lost with the story.Adjani is really beautiful, she's kind of combination of Monica Beluci and Sophie Marcau. Maybe beautiful people all resemble.The edition I saw has already cut off the sex scene, so the story appeared fragmented to me. Despite it, the tragical destiny of Queen Margot is still very clear. Her marriage was used by her mum as a bait for a massacre, her beautiful body was used by her brothers as sex tools. And the only man she fell in love with began with a one-night- sex, and ended up on a guillotine. How desperate and helpless can a woman feel!Adjani did a great job in presenting all those feelings--noble, slutty, considerate or desperate. Her beautiful blue eyes are like a quite lake, you can never tell what's beneath.

I love well done historical fiction and films. This one is excellently done, in it's acting, sumptuous sets, costumes, lively pace and adventure and occasional high violence. It's also sensually smoking, with the gorgeous and intensely passionate and feminine Adjani holding nothing back. She even manages at twice the age to look almost young enough to play 19 year old Margot at her wedding.It's a fairly easy film to enjoy if you don't worry too much about the plot turns and detailed historical machinations, and even more rewarding to watch several times or more seriously, especially if you do some background reading at Wikipedia or elsewhere.Its historical accuracy is however a decidedly mixed picture. The sense of 16th century French court life, the major historical events including the massacre, and almost all the major figures are quite accurately portrayed. Even such figures as the Protestant Admiral Coligny and Guise, Margot's principal lover at the time of her arranged marriage, are accurately portrayed. De la Mole seems to be either wholly or largely invented, but it's common for more wholly personal charters to be in historical fiction and that's generally fine with me. So too is it here, except in essence it portrays him as the love of her life – whereas she doesn't seem to really have had one.The film though seeks not merely to view Queen Margot and her voluminous affairs sympathetically, but to entirely lionize her for invented reasons. Given that she's the principal character in the film and not a trivial historical figure, that's not unimportant. While not hiding the fact that she never loved her husband and had many lovers, it did soft peddle her pronounced and highly indiscrete promiscuity, and largely invented both her "sisterly" loyalty to her husband, and tolerant and humanitarian heroic acts on behalf of him and the Protestant Huguenots more generally.Following Dumas it seeks to portray her as a woman who loyally and enduringly loved a man through thick and thin, just not the man she was forced to marry, but instead the minor Huguenot la Mole. In fact Margot's relationships seemed to have been if often passionate, also often simultaneous, overlapping, in quick succession, and not especially marked by enduring loyalty. If the contemporary portraits at Wikipedia can be believed, she while attractive was also not the transcendent beauty that is Adjani, though I hardly complain that Adjani was chosen. I'm not condemning Margot's sexual voraciousness but I am saying that the whitewashed, false and sanitized view of it here is rather in the nature of propaganda or myth. At one point for example la Mole says she's been fated to have lovers who die off on her, which seems to have had little basis.It was not unaccepted at the time for queens or female aristocrats in passionless arranged marriages to have lovers, but they were generally supposed to do so discretely, in a way that did not bring ridicule or dishonor to their husband, if honorable. Husbands too, though admittedly more universally tolerated in having affairs, were supposed to honor their wives. Both were also expected to try for some sort of marital love or at least a kind of intimate respect, and to attempt to produce legitimate heirs. Queen Margot seems to have never done any of this, or certainly not much. Most unreformed male libertines who accomplish little aren't so loved either.It's not clear she ever accomplished much, including having any children, not to mention any heir to the French throne – which she could have done (unless as seems likely she was, or became, barren - STD's?).More important though is the way the film seeks to portray Margot as a heroine to the persecuted Huguenots, not because she believed in their religious cause, but because she was a firm believer in tolerance and humanitarianism, or became both after witnessing the massacre. Both were true of her husband Henri, who acted upon them especially after becoming "the Good" King Henri of France, but I see little evidence they were of Margot. Instead I strongly suspect she was lionized by Alexandre Dumas, and likely by earlier Huguenot tales, traditions and perhaps lesser novels, in aide of gallantry, the Huguenot and liberal cause and their integration into French national affection. (There was after all, they said, at least one good French royal at the time of the St. Bartholomew's massacre.) This seems built largely on Queen Margot's being the one member of the French royal family who wasn't intent on persecuting the Huguenots, since her interests were rather elsewhere than religion, politics or idealism.As well her close personal, "sisterly", relationship with her husband seems to be almost or entirely invented by Dumas, in service of our sympathy for her. Instead Henri several times provided sanctuary to her when she had nowhere else to go, despite their at best strained and tempestuous and thereafter icy relationship. Henri did not in fact seek to bring Margot to Navarre with him when he fled Paris nor did she want to go, with or without her lover(s). Instead several years later she partly fled there from her brother King Henry III of France (who takes power as the film ends) and was partly banished due to her increasingly scandalous and heedless behavior. Again much later, when she had long been divorced from Henri and grown old, isolated and nearly penniless, in an act which speaks much more about Henri's character than their relationship, Henri brought her back to the French court, where she eventually had some role in helping care for his children by his second wife. I've also seen no evidence she helped Henri escape to Navarre or before that convinced him to convert to Catholicism to save his life.I can see much reason to understand and have some sympathy for Queen Margot, but little reason to view her as a heroine.

Since I enjoyed reading Dumas' "Queen Margot" long before this film was made, I went to see it fearing a disappointment - usually it's hard to turn a good book into an equally good film. I was pleasantly surprised. The film follows the book a bit loosely, and maybe that was a good thing; too many times copying a book faithfully makes a film lose focus and artistic/dramatic impact. "La Reine Margot" is played by a great team of actors that turned in excellent performances. Daniel Auteuil, as Henry de Navarre is superb as usual, in his depiction of an intelligent king caught in the middle of the deadly politics of a religious war; Isabelle Adjani is perfect for the title role, so is Vincent Perez as La Mole, and the rest of the cast is just as wonderful, except I thought Virna Lisi was a bit too melodramatic in depicting the "evilness" of Catherine de Medici and I found the film's suggestion that there were some sort of incestuous relations between Catherine and her sons sensationalist, unfounded and a bit slimy for a film of this caliber). The costumes seem as sumptuous as French royals would wear in those times, without looking overdone; the decors and extras appear as real as if filmed in a time warp - dirt, mess and all; they are carefully done, yet without an over-manicured look; all this conferred the film an air of authenticity instead of just making it look too perfectly staged. The violence of the St. Bartholomew massacre looks quite realistic and non-glamorized, which apparently turned off many viewers. Hmmm... give us violence, but don't let us feel bad about it.The story is loosely based on historical truth, but is close enough to it. Apparently, Margot was indeed a victim of the politics of the time, and the whole business of her saving Henry de Navarre from assassination and helping him gain political momentum is historically true. Although she divorced him later and he remarried, they remained in friendly terms. The love affair with La Mole might just as well be true too, considering that Margot had a many lovers, not surprisingly, since all other aspects of her life were controlled or repressed by others... I was a bit sorry to see Catherine de Medicis portrayed so unidimensionally as the vicious, bloodthirsty queen mother. Her methods were not excusable, but considering the times, they were the typical "diplomatic tools" employed by everyone. Although Italian and married to Henry II against her will, she loved France and embraced her resposiblities as its queen, and her purpose was, besides keeping the House of Valois on the throne, to save the country from a civil war that would have exposed it to invasion by Spain and England. OK, back to the film: I thought it was great, with excellent dialogue, well crafted scenes, good suspense, the romance is not corny, yet dramatic enough. Historically accurate or not, it gives one a glimpse of how love, life and the politics of those times must have been. Lovely to watch.