We all know the various wars between the Catholics and the Protestants at the dawn of the Reformation were bloody, brutal things. Knowing is one thing, and seeing is another. Just how savage that time was is apparent in the opening of “The Princess of Montpensier.” One group of Frenchmen is fighting another. They speak the same language and worship the same God, but disagree on the details, and so they’re killing each other. The fight continues into homes. In one, the father is killed, and then the young child. The distraught mother takes out her grief on the killer, who easily puts his blade into her stomach — before realizing she’s pregnant.
After all the killing, he’s finally horrified at what he’s done. He goes outside and wipes his blade on the grass, but it’s no use. He can never cleanse himself of this deed. He walks away from the Huguenots, but he can’t go home. The Comte de Chabannes (Lambert Wilson, whose grave presence also made “Of Gods and Men”) is ruined, hated by the king for choosing the reformers, and hated by the reformers for his desertion. He sleeps on the side of the road, until the boy he once tutored, now a man, finds him.
| On screen |
| ‘The Princess of Montpensier’ |
| 4 out of 5 stars |
| Stars: Lambert Wilson, Melanie Thierry, Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet |
| Director: Bertrand Tavernier |
| Rated: Not rated (scenes of violence and nudity) |
| Running time: 139 minutes |
The Prince de Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) is a handsome, gracious man. He’s about to find out to whom his father has chosen to marry him — the rich and beautiful heiress Marie (Melanie Thierry). She’s in love with another nobleman, Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), but no matter. As a woman says later in the film, “They decide for us. Like for the horses and the hounds.” Marie accepts her fate as a dutiful daughter should. (As her mother says of Montpensier, “He’s an ordinary brute, with no reputation yet, good or bad.”) But when the wars bring Henri back into her life, the truce she’s made with her adoring husband starts to crumble.
It’s not just the war between the Catholics and the Huguenots we experience viscerally here. The strange world of the 16th century comes to life in this dark and haunting French period drama. As she stands naked facing the wedding bed as a new bride, Marie must tolerate the onceover her own father gives her before the marriage is consummated in front of a roomful of people.
Director Bertrand Tavernier has made a stunning film, one that competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. His camera deftly follows a duel in the courtyard, then focuses on the joy and pain in the faces of his characters, people whose emotions can never be their own.
