Rickman’s Chaos Drowns in Melodramatic Excess
In 1682, landscape designer Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet) makes an unorthodox proposal to visionary architect and landscape engineer André Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts) as part of a massive project for King Louis XIV (Alan Rickman) at Versailles. While initially unsure or what to think of her designs, realizing his own vision for the project could use a shot chaos that goes beyond the status quo, he gives her the assignment, adding a few of his own ideas which is par for the course. But the core design, that is Sabine’s and Sabine’s alone, and it isn’t until she’s standing in the middle of the unfinished, muddy ground she’s tasked with transforming into something beautiful does the full weight and magnitude of the project dawn on her.
PHOTO: Focus World
A Little Chaos is a fictionalized accounting of the creation of the famed Rockwork Grove at the Palace of Versailles. It features a wonderfully complex, beautifully constructed heroine at its center in Sabine De Barra, juxtaposing her against an emotionally wounded André Le Notre who finds himself creatively hogtied just at the moment he’s been ordered to craft a garden unlike any the world has ever seen before. The two play off one another nicely, planting toes in the other’s world discovering it’s nothing like what they had imagined beforehand, the life of a working commoner and a member of the Royal Court not as far removed as it might initially appear.
For two-thirds of its running time, Rickman’s second directorial outing (his first being 1997’s The Winter Guest) borders on stunning. The script, credited to the director, Alison Deegan and Jeremy Brock, is airy, light on its feet and delicately multifaceted, traveling between the two worlds with refreshing, open-hearted ease. It grants Winslet a stupendously multifaceted character to portray, Rickman holding just enough back as to allow his Oscar-winning actress to navigate these murky, intricately personal waters with sublime dexterity.
But there is a problem, and it’s a major one. The film falls off a gigantic cliff during its final act, melodramatically and clumsily throwing down an obnoxious and unnecessary flashback that undercuts all of the beautiful work Winslet, Schoenaerts and Rickman had delivered up to that point. It spells out in agonizing detail that which did not need to be spelled out, slipping into artifice and maudlin dramaturge just when it should be building to a greater, more artfully elegant truth. It’s a disastrous turn of events, instantly transforming a very good, splendidly entertaining drama into something frustratingly second-rate.
PHOTO: Focus World
Pity, because A Little Chaos has a great deal to recommend it beyond Winslet’s magnificence. There are number of a delightful scenes and supporting turns (chiefly Stanley Tucci’s glorious flamboyance at King Luis’ brother Philippe, the Duc d’Orleans), while Ellen Kuras’ (Away We Go) beguiling camerawork dazzles with naturalistic panache. My favorite moments included an impromptu verbal waltz between Rickman and Winslet, the former happy to be mistaken for a simple gardener while the latter inadvertently sees through the façade and understands what the importance of keeping up the charade means to her King. There is also an outstanding sequence where Sabine finds herself at the very heart of the female section of the royal inner circle, each woman talking about the losses they’ve endured with a potent candor that ripped my heart in two while also speaking volumes for the woman experiencing sitting in that room for the very first time.
Sadly, in retrospect that latter moment was a depressing harbinger of the missteps to come. Had Rickman and his writers stopped there, had they allowed Sabine’s reactions to what she is hearing and the truths washing across her face to stop there, I doubt we’d have a problem. Instead, however, the filmmakers choose to use this moment of catharsis as a reason to hammer home didactically points that were already made crystal clear in much subtler a fashion, spelling things out when in reality there wasn’t a good reason to do it. It throws the film completely off course, allowing our heroine’s eventual victories to mean so much less than they otherwise would have had a different path been chosen.
There are hints that this going to happen throughout, ethereal reminders that Sabine has suffered an unimaginable tragedy in her past that she’s having trouble overcoming and forgiving herself for. Additionally, there’s an maddening subplot involving André’s conniving, lecherous wife (Helen McCrory) that goes nowhere of interest, her role in the proceedings an obvious and obnoxious contrivance that never feels even passingly genuine.
Ultimately, A Little Chaos is a victim of its own success. Had the first portions not been so wonderful, had they only been okay, just entertaining enough to bring a smile but not so good to border on exceptional, than the inelegance and outright stupidity of the climactic act maybe wouldn’t have mattered near as much as it ultimately did. But Rickman’s sophomore effort is so strong for so long that when it goes awry the effect is devastating, and as much as I enjoyed and admired much of the film that sour and disagreeable taste it left in my mouth once it was over was just too bitter a pill for me to comfortably swallow.
Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: 2 (out of 4)
