LA PRINCESSE DE MONTPENSIER
THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER
DIRECTOR
Bertrand Tavernier
SCREENPLAY
Jean Cosmos, François-Olivier Rousseau & Bertrand Tavernier.
CAST
Princesse Marie de Montpensier: Mélanie Thierry
Comte de Chabannes: Lambert Wilson
Prince de Montpensier: Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet
Henri de Guise: Gaspard Ulliel
Duc d’Anjou: Raphaël Personnaz
AWARDS
Best Costume Design, Caroline de Vivaise – César Awards (2011)
GENRE
Drama
DISTRIBUTOR
IFC Films
RUNNING TIME 139’
PRODUCTION France,
Germany, 2010
RATING Not Rated
GAUGE 35mm, Blu-ray, DVD
“Like the country itself (“la France,” a feminine word), Marie de Mézières is
contested territory in a conflict that has Roman Catholic fights Protestant on the
battlefield, and cousin fights cousin in the bedroom, Mr. Tavernier brings to life with
racing cameras, sweeping vistas, lofty words, bawdy deeds and some hard truths.
Like an action painter, Mr. Tavernier likes big, bold gestures, and he regularly fills
the screen with slashes of exciting motion, the galloping horses streaking across the
image with the camera in pursuit.”
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times.
Based on the 1622 novel of the same name by Madame de Lafayette,
Bertrand Tavernier’s supple, gripping historical epic unfolds during the
French Wars of Religion (1562–98), which pitted Catholics against
Protestants and ravaged the nation. The film centers on Marie de
Mézières, who, though in love with one man, the Duke de Guise, is
married off by her politically calculating father to the Prince of
Montpensier, whose own father proves just as scheming. Even more men
pine for the great beauty: the Duke d’Anjou and the Count de Chabannes,
the prince’s former tutor, who watches over Marie when her husband is
called to fight. Matching the intensity of the stunning battles fought on
vast hillsides are the more intimate struggles and interpersonal clashes
taking place behind closed castle doors: between headstrong Marie and
her father, between the rivals for her affection—and, most touchingly,
between the gentle Count de Chabannes, a man of God, and the barbarity
of the world.
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