Review

A Little Chaos

Sabine (Kate Winslet) and Andre (Matthias Schoenaerts) are gardeners charged with landscaping the Palace of Versailles in A Little Chaos.
Sabine (Kate Winslet) and Andre (Matthias Schoenaerts) are gardeners charged with landscaping the Palace of Versailles in A Little Chaos.

In 1997, Alan Rickman, a reliable character actor who is often the most watchable performer on the screen, made his directorial debut with a low-key movie called The Winter Guest. The film was a modest undertaking, the film version of a Sharman McDonald play that Rickman had directed on stage. It was a talky affair, notable mainly for the casting of Phyllida Law and her real-life daughter Emma Thompson as a mother and daughter who spend a cold Scottish day walking around a small coastal village.

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Sophie (Kristin Milward), Madame De Montespan (Jennifer Ehle) and the Duke of Orleans (Stanley Tucci) are members of Louis XIV’s court in the 17th-century-set romantic drama A Little Chaos.

It seemed like a measured next step for Rickman, but it has taken until now for him to direct a second film, the promisingly titled A Little Chaos. This time Rickman is not only directing but is credited as a screenwriter (along with Jeremy Brock and Alison Deegan) and also plays Louis XIV, France's Sun King, busily engaged in the construction of his new palace at Versailles.

A Little Chaos

83 Cast: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alan Rickman, Helen McCrory, Stanley Tucci

Director: Alan Rickman

Rating: R, for some sexuality and brief nudity

Running time: 117 minutes

To keep up with his majesty's ambitions, which are as lofty as they are vague, renowned royal gardener Andre Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts) engages the commoner Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet), a widowed landscape architect, to create an outdoor ballroom complete with a fancy waterwork. Andre, aware that anything less than perfection might disturb the king and have serious repercussions, asks her whether she believes in "order." Her response, that she believes "a little chaos" ought to be introduced into the design, is interesting.

So it's odd that A Little Chaos seems so rigidly corseted in its style and convention. There really isn't much attention paid to aesthetic questions about the tension between Apollonian and Dionysian elements in classical design or whatever. We understand that Sabine is a rebel who dares to derange Andre's careful design. At first he takes exception to her defiance, but it isn't long before he comes around, though the lack of chemistry between Winslet and Schoenaerts makes the machinations of Le Norte's jealous wife Francoise (Helen McCrory) -- a social climber who betrays her husband for sport -- seem like an overreaction.

It's not a terrible period romance, just an ordinary one. It's all very pretty, with some startling images of the mucky natural world as well as the king's geometrically tamed gardens. Still, it squanders the talents of its key players. (And Stanley Tucci, who shows up briefly as foppish Duke of Orleans.) An early scene in which Sabine mistakes the king -- who has ventured out without his wig -- for a gardener is played with tender, melancholy humor. Rickman the director would have been wise to give Louis a little more screen time.

Winslet comes off all right, but you have to feel for Schoenaerts, a Belgian who is superb as inarticulate meatheads in Bullhead and Rust and Bone and surprisingly charming as the kind and lovesick Gabriel Oak in Far From the Madding Crowd. Here he is required to play a 17th-century Frenchman with the sort of aristocratic British accent that has become de rigeur for a certain kind of upscale costume drama. It feels like he's trying to act through a layer of plastic wrap.

Finally, it probably ought to be noted that while the king and Andre are historical figures, Sabine is an invention -- a thoroughly modern, natural model with light makeup sent back in time to shame all those artificially painted up ladies at court.

MovieStyle on 07/10/2015

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