Les rois maudits

When this screened on SBS, I caught the last half-hour of the first episode by accident. I was hooked! The series itself it so over the top and camp but it's an interesting and fascinating way to bring the story to life.

In Ausralia, when it first screened it was shown on Sunday nights and Monday mornings at work resulted in the kinda of intense water-cooler discussions not repeated until Masterchef! It was recently replayed and it was as fabulous as the first time round. The sets and costumes are amazing - it's really avant garde theatre done for TV. Possibly the first time that has actually worked.

And of course, then there's Jeanne Moreau - impossibly beautiful, vulgar and scheming all at once. I'd love to read the book - I'm yet to find an English translation.

It's definitely not for everyone - but if you don't mind your history with a bit camp, this is just great fun and it's exquisite to look at.

she is the pillar of this admirable adaptation.a series who preserves the flavor of novel and create the best picture for discover the roots of a period. who has the energy to seduce in better manner than many history movies and who gives to fascination splendid form. and that fact is result of a cast who seems create a kind of circle around Jeanne Moreau. heart of story, soul of film, using the experience of a long career, she creates a role who is not only good or convincing but who becomes, episode by episode, a form of embroidery of nuances. it is not exactly the case of lead actress who gives sense to show but the precision of exploration the script possibilities and the geography of character. a film who reminds high level Shakespeare BBC adaptations and remains loyal to Druon masterpiece. that is its secret. and the basic motif for see it.

The basic trait - it is more an experiment than a reasonable adaptation. The clothes are the basic proof. It is saved by few performances and by the expectations of viewer. Sure , not a bad adaptation but always an inspired one. A sketch of Druon novel, reasonable in some measure, less convincing in too many.

Basically, because they could. The original series was and probably still is the best and most literate TV series ever made on this planet. The producers of this remake kept, for the most part, the very same dialogs, which is a very good thing, but have also shortened and simplified them (a.k.a. dumbing down), which robs the characters of their individuality and turns them into soap opera nimrods. They also "glamourized" many parts and replaced the very stylized, evocative and economical sets of the first series - which truly channelled the spirit of medieval illustrations while giving precedence to the acting, the character development, the story and the costumes - with impressive 3-D sets and some amazing CGI work and special effects. What they couldn't replace was Jean Piat's and Hélène Duc's talent and presence. The new cast is stellar but today's actors just pale by comparison with what came before... Whereas Hélène Duc was malevolence incarnate, Jeanne Moreau just aged badly and is scary to look at... They also couldn't replace Georges Delerue's genius in the music department and they used every opportunity given them to show every execution, rape, hanging, torture scene, burning at the stake, etc. in lurid and sadistic detail, something they learned from the so-called euro historical dramas of the last decade, which I call the history-as-a-series-of-body-fluids school and which owes more to Quentin Tarantino than Maurice Druon. What was only suggested is now shown without any shame or embarrassment. I'm not sure this is progress. But you'll certainly get a great many people riveted to their TV screens and maybe get a few of them to actually buy and read the book when they are sufficiently recovered from the shock...

Just sat through the 5 films of this series, about 7,5 hours in total. I have to say I left the seat with mixed emotions. The stuff itself is interesting, the dialog well written. But there is a lot to tip the scales to the negative. When I say the production is cheap, I don't mean it's done on a shoestring budget: on the contrary. There are lavish production numbers, gigantic sets, and probably Gerard Depardieu's fee for a typical 10 minute walkover, designed to save a mediocre film, is stellar in itself. I'm thinking more of the emotional and stylistic poverty that flies in your face every now and then. It's a total mishmash of intentions: the writers seem to have striven towards a historically correct, serious drama (as far as I understand it's a pretty close remake of an early 70s series). The casting director has herded together an international cast of actors with very different styles and abilities. There are good, insightful performances, such as given by Tchéky Karyo and Julie Gayet; then there are cheesy, dubbed, but enjoyable performances (Luca Barbareschi); and finally there are totally atrocious, bad, plain wrong performances such as Jeanne Balibar's Béatrice d'Hirson, who walks and talks like a heavily painted, booze soaked 1940s film noir tramp, dresses like Lady GaGa and at one point even wears yellow rubber gloves in a laboratory (in the year of our good Lord 1315). There's a limit to everything.

Towering over everyone is the great immortal Jeanne Moreau, who probably couldn't care less who she has to act against and tear to pieces (yes, it's a blood sport up there) and is engaged solely in giving a tour de force performance to forever silence all other actresses around her. No wonder the director(s) found this Sodom and Gomorrah of great personalities unmanageable, so he (they) just didn't give a damn and instead of a flowing narrative gave us a random selection of scenes and episodes. Everything is lit in a cheap (yes, I've said it), sharp, colorful giallo light, making it Eurotrash at the best and a made-for-cable quickie at the worst. Only this quickie lasts for hours on end.

The cherry on the top is the art direction. It's absolutely impossible to grasp the intentions of the dress, make up and set departments. The costumes are a mix of Mad Max and Xena with an occasional "period gown" thrown in to add to the confusion. I already mentioned the yellow rubber gloves and sexy latex leotards worn by Miss Balibar. It gets worse as the series progress. Jeanne Moreau gets to change her outfits almost in the middle of her scenes. In her glossy glamour dresses, shoulder pads, Ascot hats, wearing heavy modern lipstick and beauty pageant hairdos, she looks like an eighties transvestite, but nobody seems to notice or object to that. It seems many of the actresses just walk to the set with whatever they had on. The illusion keeps chattering, if ever there was one.

The sets... where do I begin? Sure, they had the money. Perhaps the producers were afraid that a historical epic wouldn't sell well enough, so a set design genius was brought in to "update" the Gothic world. Obviously heavily influenced by the Riddic Chronicles, the action seems to take place in a gigantic space ship. Unless it takes place outdoors. In that case it seems to take place on Venus, since in every single outdoor shot there is a superimposed 3D heaven with supernova effects, bright red / blue / green / purple clouds and a wind speed of at least 600 MpH. There is also a very interesting scene where they build a Gothic cathedral. If you watch carefully, you'll learn, that they actually built top-down.

Watch it, enjoy it, be blown away. Not quite what it could have been, but never a dull moment.