THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER (Bertrand Tavernier). 139 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (June 3) at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. See listing Rating: NNN
Based on a novella by Madame de La Fayette, The Princess Of Montpensier takes place during a lull in hostilities between Catholics and Huguenots in 16th-century France, where the strong-willed Marie (Mélanie Thierry) is betrothed against her will to royal scion Philippe (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) rather than to the man she desires, Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel).
Marie still wants Henri, which the jealous Philippe cannot abide. And it falls to the Comte de Chabannes (Lambert Wilson) – Philippe’s mentor, now Marie’s tutor – to solve this romantic triangle without getting his own throat cut in the process.
It’s an eminently respectable literary adaptation with the same combination of costume drama, none-too-subtle gender politics and fleeting female nudity that made Dangerous Liaisons a crowd-pleaser in 1988. Critics more cynical than I might wonder whether director Bertrand Tavernier, fresh from the disaster that was his Tommy Lee Jones mystery In The Electric Mist, saw this project as a way to recover his footing without doing anything too taxing.
The movie is intelligently realized, but Tavernier doesn’t quite find the passion that drives his characters. For all the heaving bodices and furious glances, much of The Princess Of Montpensier just sits there admiring the details of its lacework. At two and a half hours, that’s a little frustrating.
