Why must (re) see the always feverish Reine Margot in the cinema
Thirty years ago Patrice Chéreau adapted Dumas and replayed the Saint Barthélemy on the big screen. This oppressive fresco, with an incandescent adjani, comes out on the screens.
At the time of the cinema release of his Queen Margoton May 13, 1994, jointly at his presentation with great pumps at the Cannes Film Festival, the filmmaker Patrice Chéreau did not cease to attach this “old” story of the war of religions to the present time. At the beginning of the 90s, the bursting of Yugoslavia pierced the center of Europe with its share of blind violence (population displacement, ethnic purification …) it was therefore not delusional to connect the massacre of Saint-Barthélemy, mass killing in the heart of Paris of Hugenots (Protestants) by Catholics in August 1572.
Danièle Thompson, the coscenist of this adaptation of a novel by Alexandre Dumas, pointed out that this project was born in 1989 when Iran buried its supreme guide, Ayatollah Khomeiny, head of the Islamist revolution. Almost thirty years later, here Queen Margot In theaters in a world as – even more – fractured than before. Blood – and God knows if the film is full of it! – did not dry. He shines in the night. Queen Margotas macabre as it is, is of cursed splendor.
The freed to the court of Charles IX
In his note of intention supposed to convince financial partners, Patrice Chéreau had also written: ” It will be all, perhaps, except a historical film. Or rather, we will try to answer the question: how to make a historical film today? What relationship can we have today to history, to our history? In a time apparently so far from ours? So what will we have to call it, this film? Historical thriller? History of Mafia? Psychological drama? »»
Among the list of films that the filmmaker had listed for his preparation, he had: The freed,, Bull raging,, The godfather 1 & 2,, Henry V,, Tank And The seven samurai. That is to say if the aim was high. It should be noted that Chéreau was very much caught up in the previous adaptation of Queen Margot By Jean Dréville, in 1954, with Jeanne Moreau.
What exactly this Queen Margot ? Dumas’ novel published in 1845 is the first part of a trilogy called “Religion wars“or” Trilogy of the last Valois “. He begins with the arranged marriage (euphemism!) Of the Catholic Marguerite de Valois, sister of Charles IX with the Protestant Henri de Navarre. A union supposed to calm the spirits. Except that the lack of love of these two beings translates a political and religious hatred which will soon be incarnated by the massacre of the Protestants by the Catholics in the middle of Paris.
At the heart of this bloody chaos, Marguerite de Valois called “Margot” will fall in love with a young Huguenot sowing a little more disorder within her own family where intestine struggles are treated.
Blood fever
It is the producer Claude Berri who offers Patrice Chéreau to adapt Alexandre Dumas. A rather incongruous choice, so much Chéreau, a renowned theater man and filmmaker of the intimate genre (The injured man,, Hôtel de France…), Is not the type to be poured into the large historic barnum. All the more surprising since Berri had first offered to look at The three musketeers. Chéreau not seeing very well what he would have to tell about D’Artagnan had listened to Danièle Thomspon who had fogged her in Loucedé Queen Margot. Banco. Everything is there: fever, blood, bodies, sex … less seller a priori than musketeers, it will be necessary to fight firm to bring Margot to life.
Large and stifling
The rest belongs to the story: an epic shooting with a chéreau compared to a beast that surrounds its performers to better bring their concern out; A masterful Isabelle Adjani who saw the Cannes interpretation prize pass under his nose for the benefit of her partner Virna Lisi aka Catherine de Medici (a vice of the co-president of the jury Catherine Deneuve?); The rest of the casting in a state of grace: Anglade, Auteuil, Greggory, Pérez, White … and a muffled and stifling staging which gives the spectator the feeling of being literally embarked on the Jellyfish de Géricault ..
Chéreau therefore reinvented the Renaissance well, giving it the appearance of a mass for the present and future times.
Isabelle Adjani recounts the legendary shooting of Queen Margot
France. Queen Margot. By Patrice Chéreau. With: Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, Jean-Hughes Anglade… Duration: 2h41. Came out in theaters from October 1.
