Événement

Queen Margot @ Robert Classic French Film Festival

Marguerite of Valois -- known as Margot (Isabelle Adjani) -- is sister to King Charles IX. In a political move to reconcile France, a country ripped apart by the Wars of Religion, the Catholic Margot is forced to marry the Protestant King Henri of Navarre (Daniel Auteuil) in a wedding engineered by Margot's mother, Catherine de Medici (Verna Lisi). But the marriage is just scheming Catherine's opening gambit: She intends to cut off the heads of the warring factions, killing their leaders and neutralizing the Protestants, and six days after the couple's wedding, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre is carried out. As thousands are murdered in the streets of Paris, a wounded Protestant, La Môle (Vincent Perez), desperately knocks on Margot's door. Margot not only hides the young man and tends to his wounds, she eventually falls in love with him and switches her allegiances. Based on Alexandre Dumas' novel, "Queen Margot" was awarded the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize and won five Cesar Awards.

"Plenty of blood is spilled in the late Patrice Chéreau's masterful 1994 wars of religion epic 'Queen Margot,'" observes the LA Times. "But more important, blood also courses through the movie's veins like a beautiful, dangerous and twisty river. Chéreau's and screenwriter Danièle Thompson's lively adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel remains a model of heaving, combustible history, in which period lavishness and performance energy aren't mutually exclusive. Splendidly acted and tautly executed, with the restoration of Chéreau's 2007 director's cut stressing Philippe Rousselot's kinetic, beautifully florid cinematography, 'Queen Margot' depicts the perversity of rule and the bitter grace of hard-won compassion with the most assured of brush strokes."

With an introduction and post-film discussion by Cate Marquis, film critic for the St. Louis Jewish Light and co-founder of the St. Louis Film Critics professional association.