La Reine Margot: French Film Guide

Description

Patrice Chereau's 1994 film "La Reine Margot" paints a vivid canvas of political intolerance and intrigue framed as a romance between Marguerite de Valois (Isabelle Adjani) and her Protestant lover La Mole (Vincent Perez). The film is based on Alexandre Dumas' historical novel and is renowned for its eroticised and violent depiction of the French national past, especially the treatment of the 1572 St Bartholomew's Day massacre of French Protestants. Julianne Pidduck examines the industrial, social and political contexts of the film's production as part of an influential recent cycle of French historical 'super-productions', including "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "The Horseman on the Roof". Conceived as a cinematic 'event ' film featuring the elusive star Isabelle Adjani, "Margot" presents a theatrical chiaroscuro Renaissance past. Pidduck goes deep into this prestigious costume film and traces the wide critical acclaim it has received, both nationally and internationally. She also reveals how "Margot's" cinematic spectacle of Renaissance religious intolerance offers a haunting allegory French and European experience.

Julianne Pidduck is Lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Research, Lancaster University. Author of 'Contemporary Costume Film: Space, Place and the Past'.

SPLICEThe Cine-Files books assiduously shepard the reader through the text, cross-referencing each observation with earlier remarks and Pidduck leavens her discussion with nicely deployed costume detail...and an attention to the extreme physicality of Chereau's film.' Richard Armstrong