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La Reine Margot
Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil star in Patrice Chéreau's sumptuous historical drama; a thunderously good yarn full of dastardly plots, familial hatred and perverse desire.
Director: Patrice Chéreau
Overview
Patrice Chéreau's sumptuous historical drama, centred on the intrigues leading up to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, works best as a thunderously good yarn, full of dastardly plots, familial hatred, perverse desire, ill-starred romance and lashings of gore. Basically, the complex storyline charts the rivalry between Catholics and Huguenots at the time of the arranged marriage of Henri de Navarre (Daniel Auteuil) to Margot (Isabelle Adjani), sister of Henri III of France and daughter of Catherine de Medici, who rules her depraved clan with a will or iron. While this is not an old-style glamorisation of sixteenth-century life, it is full-bloodedly romantic, with heaving emotions, cunning machinations and misplaced loyalties; it's also spectacular to look at, enhanced by Chéreau's imaginative use of music, and performed with considerable brio by the starry cast.
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