A Little Chaos (2015)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

The acting in this movie is really good.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's worth it just for one last glimpse of Alan Rickman in full uncomfortable sneer, the pained uncle, so wounded and so wise... And it's worth it for some other stuff too, including a Winslet somehow more mature, and some truly beautiful images from Rickman as director.But there's a sense that - like its late lamented director - the script of A Little Chaos could have given us so much more. Having decided for dramatic purposes to get so chaotic with the truth - in reality Le Notre the head gardener was decades older than the King, not t'other way round, and Winslet's radical female gardener simply didn't exist - the writers don't take much creative advantage.Perhaps lacking confidence in any of the strands, they try to throw in too much that remains undeveloped: the back-story of Winslet's family is worthily sad, but neither necessary nor developed into any explanation of her relationship to natural forces; supplanted mistress Jennifer Ehle's semi-secret court of wounded women is a surprising, haunting and beautiful moment, but basically a digression; Stanley Tucci is wasted; a couple of pat metaphors aside, the tension between order and chaos doesn't go anywhere.Structurally, Rickman the writer-director has made Rickman the actor part of the problem. Because from the opening scene we see the fragile warmth behind the monarchical mask - and because it's Alan Rickman and everyone knows that Professor Snape always secretly cares - he can't carry the kind of threat required of the capricious absolute ruler. If the King was still a distant authority, his scene with Winslet and the pear tree would be a moment of revelation and transformation; instead it's just pleasant and a bit poignant. And by then, there's no chance that he's going to be anything other than indulgent of the apparent hiccough of the waterlogged garden.There's a similar lost opportunity around Schoenaerts. His Le Notre doesn't develop at all. He's a bit snooty in his first scene, but after that he's just sort of romantically moody. The potential conflict and tension between a (much more) austere, order-obsessed Le Notre and a (more) wild and wilful Winslet is never realized. Because Madame Le Notre is such a horror, and promiscuous, and already signed up to an open relationship, there's no practical or moral obstacle to Schoenaerts and Winslet leaping into the shrubbery. There's no tension, and no sense of achievement.(And they don't even leap into the shrubbery. All that mud, and all that luscious fruit, and they finally get it on indoors, which seems rather a waste - as well as a defusing of the little passion there was.)Pruned (sorry) and chopped around a bit, the script would have more energy and grip. If Schoenaerts was really uncomfortable about Winslet's garden planning, and about the idea of betraying his wife, Winslet and the story would have something to aim at and work on. If Rickman seemed capable of ruining lives by banishment from employment in his Eden, the risks and tensions would have consequences and impact. Say Schoenaerts is still uncertain, about the funky horticulture and about Winslet, when the more perceptive Mrs Le Notre ruins the garden to forestall the threat of losing her husband; Schoenaerts and Winslet then have their moment of near-death near-passion in the tempest; Jennifer Ehle's boudoir then becomes a place of real refuge, from a very grumpy King and from the unknown result of the passion; the nicely-staged Mexican stand-off between the wounded ladies and the King's posse can then be a moment of real resolution - what if that's the moment when she realizes that the King who could be about to ruin her is the same mysterious figure she met under the pear tree? - when Winslet's spirit and argument must convince the King, and when Schoenaerts must decide to follow his heart and speak up for her. Instead Rickman denies himself a fitting farewell, and we're left wanting what might have been.https://thescripthack.wordpress.com

Make no mistake, this film is not going to keep you riveted to your chair. In fact, I only watched it to sort of catch up with what Kate Winslet is doing more recently, and figured I would watch the first 10-20 minutes of it. It hooked me.It's a curious little movie. It tells the story of a female gardener who helps develop the gardens at Versailles. It's historical fiction. The film was directed and co-written by Alan Rickman, who plays King Louis XIV of France.Kate Winslet is (looking quite buxom and older than I remember her) quite good here as the gardener. Matthias Schoenaerts, a Belgian actor, however, seemed to me to be the most boring man ever in a film. Yawn to his role as the senior landscaper. Alan Rickman is quite delicious. I think we hardly realized what a really fine actor he was. Stanley Tucci was mildly amusing here, but his role could as easily have been left out of the film; he provided slight humor in a serious film.Worth a watch for serious film-goers.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed watching this film. It was - well - nice. Still, I was disappointed. "A little chaos" has no point to me.First, I had thought it was based on a true story: a charming footnote in history worth being told. But no: The plot is entirely made up, the main character Sabine de Barra never existed and Versailles' famed garden architect André Le Nôtre was over 70 when he completed the surroundings of the castle. And Louis XIV was never ever such a subtle self-ironic personality as displayed by Rickman.So - what might be the point of the story? The "Win-against-all-odds" plot is highly predictable and really not much.The love story comes somewhat inevitable and - although nicely played by Winslet and Schoenaerts - does not really add to excitement; it has hardly any twists and turns.The gardening aspect could be interesting, but without in-depth knowledge of the history of garden architecture, we viewers are kept at loss to see why Mme de Barra's concepts might have been groundbreaking to gardening.For an breathtaking period drama the visuals are too modest and small.Personally, I would have liked to take this little episode as the exemplary and decisive turning point in the history of the ancien régime. Individual thinking and considerations of nature's law paving the way for 1789's revolution that overthrew the royals and their useless courtiers. The king's family, the nobles, their jaded ways are doomed long before they even know it.But we get far too little insight to allow such a far-reaching interpretation.What remains is a nice enough film for a rainy Sunday afternoon, but not more. And that is really a pity.

Alan Rickman's second foray as a director - after THE WINTER GUEST (1997), reunites him with his SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1995, 9/10) co-star Kate Winslet almost 20 years later. The story juices up a fictitious character, Sabine de Barra (Winslet), a widow and unconventional horticulturist, to the life of landscapist maestro André Le Nôtre (Schoenaerts), who is appointed by King Louis XIV of France (Rickman) for the demanding task of designing gardens of Versailles.Whenever a well-known thespian takes a crack at the director chair, one's knee-jerking reaction might be, is it a one-off deal as a personal vanity project running off the rail or, in a rarer case, an endeavour truly resonates with the right vibe. Well, Rickman's eye-friendly period offering should fortuitously befit the latter category.The plot, conceived by Alison Deegan and co-written with Rickman and Brock, doesn't go off the beaten track to sensationalise the scandalous affair between Sabin and André, emphasise the peer pressure and sexism nor flaunt the royal mores which someone still holds dearly out of nostalgia. On the contrary, the film stay calms, most thoroughly, a prosaic but righteously refrained emotional arc trickles in unhurriedly, owing to an unshowy methodology of the main cast (Stanley Tucci's preferentially homosexual Duke Philippe d'Orleans and Jennifer Ehle's effervescent Madame De Montespan are the exceptions), Winslet is ever so plain, detached, sometimes even absent-minded, in channelling a woman obsessed with a past tragedy and when eventually a new romance catches up with her, she must uncover her carefully concealed wound in order to move on.Schoenaerts is currently the go-to guy for British period outputs, he emerges even more reserved than in FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (2015), his André is almost too rational to carry conviction in this storybook tale (in reality, he should be around seventy during the time), all the more, he is completely devoid of any detectable emotion during the heightened two- hander between him and Madame Françoise Le Nôtre (a deliciously devious McCrory), there must be a thin fine line between unresponsiveness and strategic downplaying.Well, the best of pick, is naturally, Mr. Rickman himself, handsomely juggles between Louis XIV's monarchical grandeur and his more humane side with a poker face, particularly in the scenes shared with Winslet, a belated reunion between Colonel Brandon and Marianne Dashwood, it accurately strikes the soft spot of the dewy-eyed.A LITTLE CHAOS, where the chaos is mostly buried underneath the surface, is a quaintly small- scaled drama-romance, a thoroughly-stewed course pandered to those suckers for period production who has an even-tempered heart.