Movie Reviews: A Little Chaos & Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

[hrj]

I’m reviewing these two movies on the same day largely through the coincidence of timing. But there are some interesting aspects to compare/contrast other than the simple fact that both are costume flicks that had very limited distribution.

I’d originally meant to see A Little Chaos in the theater with thread_walker but the night we went, the projector for that film was malfunctioning and we ended up seeing Jurassic World instead, and then it was gone from the theaters. But I recently picked it up on DVD (in a fit of Alan Rickman mourning -- he plays King Louis XIV).

A Little Chaos tells a highly fictionalized story of the design and construction of the gardens at Versailles under King Louis XIV, centering on a woman chosen to design and oversee one particular element of the gardens. The storyline depicts the protagonist, Sabine, as being chosen for the work by the royal gardener Andre LeNotre (who is a solidly historic figure) both despite and because of her imaginative and informal designs. In addition to the challenges of the work, of satisfying her royal patron, of dealing with jealous and sexist colleagues, and of a slow-growing romance between her and LeNotre, there are constant hints of some sort of tragic past involving her late husband and young daughter.

The story is very atmospheric, but never quite came together for me. It seemed filled with predictable tropes: the encounter with the king whom she doesn’t recognize and thus interacts with as an equal, much to his amusement; the royal gardener’s jealous-while-unfaithful wife who deliberately sabotages the landscaping project; the long workaholic hours as expiation for some past failure that is revealed to us at the emotional climax. But all in all it felt like an excuse for lovely scenery and fancy dress without any clear message or meaning. Given the casting (Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, Stanley Tucci, a lovely cameo by Jennifer Ehle as Madame de Montespan) one feels it could have been something more.

I was disappointed in the costuming. There was an adequate nod to the general silhouette and style, but the fabric choices all felt off, the details were completely off the mark, and Sabine’s look is relentlessly “romantic disarray”.

But among all of this weak tea, there was one scene that made me sit up and give a deep sigh of appreciation. In the midst of various crises over whether Sabine will be allowed to finish her project or not, she is summoned to the court at Fontainebleu. Before being taken into the king’s presence, she is swept away by the king’s mistress (the Marquise de Montespan) to a private salon with various ladies of the court. Sabine is portrayed as solidly hard-working middle class and deeply uncomfortable with this setting. At first, the ladies start in with light banter about beauty and appearances, discussing how her work hasn’t coarsened her skin, and commenting on the relative beauty of their breasts (including a bit of show and tell). Then as they begin quizzing her on her personal history and ask about children, Sabine gets a striken look (I think this is the first point when we’re told that her daughter is dead) and the ladies all begin sharing information about the children they’ve lost, and to what, and how they aren’t allowed to talk about them at court because the king doesn’t want to hear about death. And suddenly all differences of rank and station evaporate and it’s a room full of mothers, equal in their sorrow. Of all the things the movie tried to do, that was the one that worked for me. It was a portrayal of a world of women finding common ground in the face of lives that revolve around, and are always in relation to, the powerful men in their lives.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an entirely different sort of movie. Once again, I’d been planning to see it with thread_walker (who had already seen it once, and whose recommendation was what made me willing to give it a try) but the very night we had scheduled was when it disappeared from almost all the theaters where it had been showing. So we ended up going back to my place to watch the DVD of A Little Chaos instead and I drove out to Antioch by myself a couple days later to catch PPZ before it evaporated entirely.

I picked up the book by this title back when it first came out. I was amused by the concept (this was before that whole genre quickly became overdone) and on a bit of an Austen-retellings kick. I was...unimpressed. It struck me as a one-joke concept that was all played out within the first chapter. Like many Austen pastiches, the canon material and additions felt awkwardly pasted together.

A bit later, there was a video trailer for the book on YouTube that gave me the same impression: amusing conceit, but too thin for a whole story. (The advantage in this case being that the trailer was about the right length for the available concept.)

So I hadn’t actually been interested in seeing the movie, as well as having been almost unaware of its existence, until thread_walker mentioned having enjoyed it enough to be willing to see it again with me. Well, that’s enough of a recommendation for a try. Surprisingly enough, I found it charmingly delightful, although one must append “for what it is” to amost every statement I make here.

It is--unashamedly--a violent, action packed, zombie-killing movie. But the over-arching zombie plot actually has coherence and internal consistency, as well as being integrated surprisingly well with the Pride and Prejudice framing story. The use of verbatim dialogue from the Austen novel, rather than feeling lazy and derivative, played as an enormous in-joke with the audience. (There were also a lot of deliberate call-outs to the Firth/Ehle miniseries, including a completely gratuitous “swimming Darcy” scene.)

The ways in which the canonical characters, relationships, and events were adapted to the zombie plot worked fairly smoothly, even when completely illogical (for example, retaining the notion of the girls’ economic dependence on achieving good marriages while simultaneously training them to be kick-ass anti-zombie martial artists as an ordinary "accomplishment" expected of young women). I was particularly delighted with the conversion of Lady Catherine de Bourgh from overbearing bore into the most famed zombie-fighter in England, complete with form-fitting leather breeches and eyepatch.

But I have to say, two things made the difference for me in enjoying the movie far more than I’d expected. The lesser of these is that the production values were stunning. Excellent sets and setting, impressive (if far from historically accurate) costuming, and the feel of a lived-in world. The more important feature was how solidly feminist a story it was, in terms of the characters’ relationships with each other (both retained from Austen, and not), and in the agency the characters were given, without only turning the female characters into generic ass-kicking action-heroines. But more than that, the film regularly gave us a female gaze--not exclusively, but I’d say more often than a male one. It truly felt like the movie was for female viewers, as opposed to simply allowing them to come too.

And that’s where the two movies intersect for me: with all their differences and their individual flaws, they both have solid moments of respecting and catering to me as a female viewer.

Comments

[lifeofglamour.livejournal.com]

I skipped P&P&Z as a book because I felt the same way - one note gimmick, not enough to sustain a whole story. Thanks for the review, sounds like they worked it into a decent movie.

[beanolc.livejournal.com]

As a Dickensian, Austen was always (I admit) and afterthought for me. I did not read either novel, but I knew the story well enough to be thoroughly tickled with how well the zombie plot wove in. I very much enjoyed PPZ.