Rating of
1/4
Very odd costume drama, a parody perhaps
FilmCrave User - wrote on 01/23/19
Very odd fim. A costume drama, with eleborate costumes, as you would expect,, but little lies underneath. The cotume designers clearly had a field day with tight corsets, crinolines and elborate wigs for the men; while the women are beautifully coiffed and clean, difficult, one would have thought, for the early 18th century. The settings are filmed voluptuously: great carved four poster beds, wooden floors, walls hung with fine tapestries. There are long corridors, lit at night by vast arrays of candles, like some Gothic horror show. There are set pieces with grotesqye wobbling naked flesh, rotten fruit, rabbits running around helplessly like the 17 children the queen has lost. It is tragi-pathos on a grand scale, filmes through a distorting lens at time to make everythin g even more repulsive and yet fascinating.
There is virtually no plot, or story: two women, one a Lady fallen on hard times, the other a master manipulator of palace intrigue, vie for power in the court of an old Queen as the protagonists aargue about fighting France or suin g for peace. As an analogy of our current political chaos, it is laboured and exaggerate, a single idea drawn out for over two hours. There is no point to any of it. The 'characters' are entirely 2 dimensional, with no attempt at endowing them with emotional depth or conflict.
It is as if the director aimed for a mishmash of Ken Russell and Tim Burton, and ended up with.... Fawlty Towers/MOnty Python.
