Angélique

The new Angelique to me is a sign of everything that's wrong with the French TV of last 20 or maybe even 30 years. French art-house cinema is still pretty strong, and they often produce quite good commercial movies too , but TV is a different story. French TV used to produce some nice, immensely watchable (if not particularly profound) literary adaptations that used to be very popular with viewers far beyond France, especially in many eastern European countries and former USSR. What we get now is absolutely unwatchable, inconsistent, and pretentious. There are good exceptions like Engrenages or Les Revenants, but these are more like French takes on popular US TV models. When it comes to material based on the history of France, the French TV is churning up things like faux-arty but completely incomprehensible new version of Accursed Kings after Maurice Druon, atrociously amateurish new version of La Dame de Monsoreau after Dumas and this dud - Angelique, Marquise of Boredom. The original film series is often criticized for the turning the source material into some Alexandre Dumas- Lite period adventure pieces, but that is exactly why I loved them. In all honesty, the source books are not masterpieces. I have read almost all of them and I believe that at best they are just a cape and sward adventures in lush period settings told from a woman's perspective (kind of precursor of The Outlander), at worse (and every subsequent book is getting worse and worse) they are just your average romance novels that are supposed to have Fabio on the cover (ok, maybe slightly better researched and written than your average romance novel, but you know still a type of book where the titular lady hero spends pages objectifying various sexy studs, still holding a candle for a love of her life and simultaneously getting in touch with her inner goddess...). The original film adaptations (5 films) were made by Bernard Borderie who few years before that made perhaps the most satisfying (yet still imperfect) adaptation of The Three Musketeers. He treated Angelique in the same way, making it a rollercoaster of fast paced adventures of the beautiful heroine with swordfights, poisonings, exotic locales, and a little bit of sexual titillation. The quality of films varied - I consider 1st and 3rd films excellent, 2nd and 5th are OK and 4th is even worse (though its worst part - a hilarious "torture by cats" scene comes directly from the source material). Now, there are certain dedicated fans of the books that consider that these films don't do justice to the source material but sorry, in my opinion they mostly improve upon the books (and in my opinion there are very few films out that improve upon the books). I wonder what these critics think of this new take that manages to make the France of Louis XIV look as a completely unattractive and unpleasant place, has the ladies and gentlemen behave like street thugs, and turn the titular character into some kind of swashbuckling tomboy. I did not like anything about this series from casting to costume design. The old film had a gorgeous leading actress - Michelle Mercier, whose popularity for a while even rivaled that of Brigitte Bardot. Nora Arnezeder seems to be a beautiful and talented young lady - and maybe with a right material and presentation she can become a prominent star - but the way she is directed, dressed, even lit in this series make her look completely plain and forgettable. As to the gentleman around her? In addition to charismatic Rober Hossein as Joffrey, almost every suitor of Angelique was drop dead gorgeous: Gulianno Gemma, Sammi Frey, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and many more. Here they all look drab and boring. However, the worst offender is the director - the directing is simply inept, from time to time even amateurish. And am not speaking about artistic choices, I am speaking about simple things like setting up a scene, transitions between pivotal events, built up of tension or rather lack of thereof. I read some reviews praising the costumes and sets, come on, you can't be serious?!

Malformed original story with absolutly tragic acting performances. C-grade soup opera. Cant compare with original movie in any way.

I really appreciated the new film. It focuses more on the era (and now as well) issues - political, social, religious and personal. The choice of the actors are very good. I hope that there will be a next film (or several ones).

What's wrong with French movie industry? That movie just should not exist. Beautiful story was jinxed with this nonsense. Angelique is terrible, definitely not Michele Mercier. Comte de Peyrac is old. Common, he is 30 years old in the book not 60+ weirdo. Nicolas is same age as Angelique, not boring dude in his 40th... Degre is ok but can't be compared with Jean Rochefort. I am very disappointed. Seriously, it was such a beautiful series of movies from 60th, still perfect even now. I watched it recently, whole series. Beautiful costumes, nature, personages. Nothing of that I can find in this movie: dark scenes, bleached colors, weird costumes... awful, just awful.

an interesting and courageous project. to present to a new generation, after almost half of century, a story who represents a great success for its period. but it is not only ambition. the new Angelique is real different. for the cold tension, for the new dimensions of the lead character, for the admirable cast, costumes and grace of details. it reflects the expectations of the contemporary public and that fact does it interesting. the romanticism is not the star and Angelique seems be more credible as country girl who fights in a pragmatic manner for her purpose. a film who could be the first from a series. or only signal for remind an old brand. each of possibilities are good point for a courageous project.