Queen Margot
"Queen Margot" is another filthy period picture — that is to say, one in which everyone seems sorely in need of a bath.And though it's not up there with such other recent members of the genre as "Braveheart" and "Rob Roy," it's hard to ignore a movie that boasts the presence of Isabelle Adjani ("Nosferatu," "The Story of Adele H."), Daniel Auteuil ("Jean de Florette," "Manon of the Spring") and Virna Lisi ("How to Murder Your Wife," "Assault on a Queen").
Adjani has the title role and plays it ice-cold as the 16th-century Frenchwoman whose queen mother Catherine de Medici (Lisi) arranges for Catholic Margot to marry Protestant Henri de Navarre (Auteuil) — ostensibly to quell religious intolerance and bring peace to warring French religionists.
But Catherine really has other power plays up her sleeve, and the film's centerpiece is a horrifying depiction of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre she engineers, leaving in its wake the bodies of hundreds of Protestants in the streets of Paris (and thousands more on the outskirts of the city).
Meanwhile, Margot and Henri reluctantly perpetuate their in-name-only marriage, and the film spends a lot of time with dark and dreary court intrigue, back-stabbing, double-crossing and plenty of gory violence.
Adjani makes for a mesmerizing presence, though she is twice as old as her character and her face remains expressionless for most of the film. And Lisi, who was an international sex symbol in the '60s, hides her still attractive features to be physically imposing as a character who represents evil at its most basic. At one point she laments, "I have to do all the dirty work." (Lisi won the best actress award at Cannes.)
But the movie is a jumbled mess that never really comes alive, and in the end may feel like something of an endurance test.
"Queen Margot" is rated R for violence, gore, sex and nudity.