At 80, the ever-youthful Rohmer embraces digital technology and with boldly innovative (but also quaintly anachronistic) techniques recreates Paris during the Revolution. Using backdrops painted in the style of the period and superimposing the authentically-accoutred actors, Rohmer achieves a vibrant tension between period accuracy and the acknowledgement of our unavoidably limited perspective on that time. And as always in Rohmer the perception of events carries as much weight as the events themselves. Here the film cleaves to the point of view of its heroine, the “incorrigible royalist” Grace Elliott, a Scottish-born high-society woman living in Paris and mixing with citizens on both sides of the ideological divide. The film focuses on the events of 1792-93, known as the Terror, and their impact on Grace and her friends, especially the Duke of Orléans, a cousin of King Louis XVI but also a supporter of the Revolution. As the aristocrats come under increasing pressure from the revolutionaries, the courageous Grace refuses to compromise her principles, even at the risk of her life. The film sparked a furore in France where the details of the Terror have traditionally been overlooked in the interest of idealizing the democratic spirit of the common man.

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Click here for interview with the director.