{"id":4583,"date":"2015-07-09T06:41:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T10:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4583"},"modified":"2015-07-28T07:06:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T11:06:37","slug":"a-little-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4583","title":{"rendered":"A Little Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"a_little_chaos_film_2015_versailles_garden_habitua\"OK, OK, the reviews are tepid, but for my taste, A Little Chaos<\/em> (trailer<\/a>) is a perfect light summertime romance. Impeccable acting (Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Stanley Tucci, and Alan Rickman), beautiful scenery, and gorgeous late 17th c. costumes. Settle into the comfy theater seats and the welcome theater air-conditioning, and let the film wash over you. No heavy mental or emotional lifting required.<\/p>\n

The premise is that on a ridiculously short timetable and budget, France\u2019s Louis XIV, the Sun King, has decreed that paradisaical gardens be created to expand the grounds at his Versailles palace. Garden design has been placed in the reliable hands of Andr\u00e9 Le N\u00f4tre (Schoenaerts), a proponent of order in the landscape. His plans include an elaborate display of fountains. But he needs help. After interviewing numerous candidates, he chooses the wildly fictional Madame Sabine de Barra (Winslet) to create the garden\u2019s ballroom, for the reason that she will introduce new ideas (a shaky premise, there)\u2014and, as the title suggests, a little chaos.<\/p>\n

The two of them are attracted to each other, but have vastly different temperaments and face a fairly predictable set of obstacles. Critics who pooh-pooh the film as a failed feminist fable miss its many pleasures: the absurd courtiers, Stanley Tucci as the king\u2019s gay brother, the interplay among the women when they\u2019re alone behind closed doors, scenery to drool over, the joy of bringing dirt and greenery to beautiful life, and, especially, Alan Rickman playing Louis XIV\u2014\u201ca character worthy of his imperious, reptilian charisma,\u201d as Stephen Holden<\/a> said in the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rickman directed and helped write the film, too. \u201cActing should be about risky projects as much as it can be about entertaining,\u201d he told Joe Neumaier<\/a> at the New York Daily News<\/em>. \u201cThe risk is what makes you want to do it.\u201d Bringing to life characters from another culture and long-past century in a revisionist history confection is almost as risky as thinking you can make water dance.<\/p>\n

The real Salle de Bal<\/em> (the Bosquet des Rocailles<\/em>) at Versailles was inaugurated in 1685 and is the gardens\u2019 only surviving cascade. PHOTO<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t go with inflated expectations you won\u2019t be disappointed. You will be well pleased. Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 39%; audience score 49%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, OK, the reviews are tepid, but for my taste, A Little Chaos (trailer) is a perfect light summertime romance. Impeccable acting (Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Stanley Tucci, and Alan Rickman), beautiful scenery, and gorgeous late 17th c. costumes. Settle … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A Little Chaos - a perfect summertime movie","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57,394,104],"tags":[395,396,128,73],"class_list":["post-4583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-romance","category-the-morgue","tag-alan-rickman","tag-gardens-of-versailles","tag-history","tag-nature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1bV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4591,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions\/4591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}