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Review: A Little Chaos

★★★☆☆

Three stars

Like most period dramas, Alan Rickman’s A Little Chaos is pleasantly predictable and idealistic, but it’s also heart-warming and surprisingly lovable thanks to a strong cast and lavish production values.

Kate Winslet is fantastic as the widowed Sabine De Barra, a fictional garden designer chosen to create the new water gardens for King Louis XIV at the Palais de Versailles in Paris. An independent ‘hands-on’ woman drawn inadvertently into the inner-aristocratic circle of French late seventeenth century society, Sabine is intelligent, resourceful, and takes her work very seriously, but the lingering trauma of the death of her husband and daughter refuses to let her go. Sabine’s new boss is the handsome landscape-designer André Le NoÌ‚tre (Matthias Schoenaerts), and it is terribly obvious from the moment they meet that sooner or later romance will – quite literally – blossom.

Sabine’s modest perception of herself leaves her daunted by the strange, intimidating aristocratic figures of court, but André helps keep her grounded and passionate about the project. In a spicy subplot, André’s jealous cheating wife (Helen McCrory) schemes to ruin Sabine’s plans as she grows infinitely jealous of Sabine’s honest charming of the French court and, most importantly, the King. It was never going to be just plain sailing for poor Sabine.

Winslet is, by far, the winning element of this film. Her Sabine is gentle, enchanting, and reflective, all qualities on display while struggling to come to terms with the tragic events of her life. She may be a little older than the other women at the Royal Court, but she emerges the most elegant and wise of all of them. Her infectious character soon begins to rub off on everyone around her, and it’s refreshingly cathartic when things start to go her way.

The film is packed with French clichés. “Macaroon?” The King asks, whilst around him the court runs wild with extravagant outfits and criss-crossing affairs. The widespread acceptance of polygamous relationships is a concept much associated with Parisian high-society, and Rickman has no problem playing this to the maximum. The film suggests that marital relations are no more than a social convenience and that long-standing affairs are the only opportunity to experience true love and passion. Nevertheless, the film is tinged with amiable humour, most notably by the extravagant bisexual Duke Philippe (Stanley Tucci), whose elaborate eccentricity is played with great comic effect.

A Little Chaos does raise some important issues on the treatment of women – even in upper-class society – and the sense of claustrophobia and corruption within the court is obvious. Yet despite its potential to ask big questions, these subjects remain largely under-developed. One example of this resides in the long figurative exchange between Sabine and the King about the fading beauty of roses (akin to his fading perceptions of his mistress), which seems to touch upon a poignant metaphor for a brief second, only to abruptly move on. Perhaps worse than this was the awkwardly stilted love-scene which made the entire cinema audience cringe.

The beauty of the gardens is captured in all kinds of majestic locations, including Oxford’s very own Blenheim Palace, but the actual Palais de Versailles seems achingly and disappointingly absent throughout the film. In spite of this, however, it’s a light-hearted, feel-good film which never takes itself too seriously. If you’re in need of a little break from revision, A Little Chaos will do the trick nicely

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