Alan Rickman returns to the director’s seat after seventeen years for A Little Chaos, a period drama about the principal gardener of King Louis the XIV of France.
André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts) is looking to employ landscape architects to help put balance and order in the gardens commissioned by the King (Alan Rickman). He chooses Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet), an unknown gardener whose proposed plans intrigue him. This elicits the jealousy of his wife Madame Françoise Le Nôtre (Helen McCrory) who sees her as a threat to their marriage. But Sabine has personal issues of her own to deal with.
Mr Rickman’s film starts off rather well, as an elegant study of order and chaos, and how the two are required to encourage and embellish a sense of harmony. Sabine, the outsider at court, injects life and excitement in a world that has turned stagnant and incestuous by virtue of being ‘trapped’ within the narrow privileged confines delineated by the King. Ironically, conformity is also what brings the film down in the second half. Chaos is waived aside in favour of a well-worn established template that explains everything neatly and then spoonfeeds it to us. Instead of engaging in a more profound discussion, the script simply gives up, unmasking its true nature: a soap opera in corsets and breeches. There is the mandatory flashback and the unavoidable, uplifting verbal confrontation between Sabine and the King. The latter feels especially intrusive because, albeit well-written, it is entirely redundant because we had already seen it all in what is easily the best sequence of the film (the one in the pear orchard). The film’s coda, when Sabine’s work is finally unveiled in front of the King, exposes Mr Rickman’s shortcomings as a director in that it is completely underwhelming and rather silly. The performances though are generally good, with Stanley Tucci, as usual, getting the best lines (as the Duke d’Orleans). Also to be commended are Ms McCrory and Jennifer Ehle (Madame de Montespan).
Pity.
Related
- Helen McCrory in Medea (2014)
- Stanley Tucci in Easy A (2010) and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
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