BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Prismark10 Kate Winslet plays the fictional landscape gardener Madame Sabine de Barra, hired to create a water feature at Versailles. Her work defies conventions of the time and Madame Sabine falls for the master designer André Le Nôtre even though she is haunted by her past.The film was directed by Alan Rickman, who also co-wrote it and plays the Sun King. The problem is this is a slight tale and boring. It actually could had done by being more chaotic and wilder.Winslet has little chemistry with Matthias Schoenaerts, she does better when she bumps into King Louis who pretends to be a gardener.

SnoopyStyle André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a respected landscaping working for King Louis XIV of France (Alan Rickman) after his mother Queen's death. He interviews Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet) to create an outdoor ballroom at Versailles. She lost her husband and daughter. Her vision clashes with his need for order. The interview goes badly but he accepts advise from his father. She gains notice at the Royal court and by the King. She gets closer to André raising the ire of his wife.The Royal court intrigue is muddled. The characters and their relationships are given little time or effort. That limits any dramatic ability from that element. Matthias Schoenaerts is quiet in his acting to the point of inert. There is one shinning star that this story revolves around and that is Kate Winslet. She is powerfully reserved and emotionally expansive. She never fails to deliver. There are some unexpected turns while the main relationship has limited drama. This is all about Winslet and her ability to carry this movie.

Turfseer We're told it's a sin to speak ill of the dead. Unfortunately, when reviewing Alan Rickman's 17th-century costume drama, A Little Chaos, committing such a sin might be necessary in order to convey the sheer awfulness of the late thespian's and concomitant director's project. Please don't construe that my intent is to disparage Mr. Rickman in general—quite the contrary, he was one of the finest actors of our time, who handled a vast range of roles most often with the highest aplomb.Here, unfortunately, he not only made the mistake of acting in this turgid drama but contributed as one of the co-writers to the screenplay. The story was conceived by one Allison Deegan who somehow got the idea that there was much drama in the creation of the grand gardens at Versailles during the reign of King Louis IV in France. The focus is on landscaper Monsieur André Le Nôtre who designed the gardens and enjoyed the patronage of King Louis throughout his life. Unfortunately, Le Nôtre was pushing 70 when the film's narrative begins in 1682. Instead, Deegan transformed Le Nôtre into a stud half the real character's age and the handsome Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts was conscripted to play opposite Kate Winslet as Sabine de Barra, an independent landscaper who is hired specifically to build a fountain surrounding a small outdoor ballroom out in the middle of nowhere.Sabine is a completely fictional character and the idea of woman working as an independent landscaper at that time is laughable. But Rickman was delighted with the idea. As quoted by Susan King in the L.A. Times, "There would be no woman with a profession at that time," Rickman noted, adding that he loved the idea of "putting a completely fictitious character in the middle of a known bit of history." As we slog through the proceedings (waiting for the forgone conclusion of the Versailles landscaping triumph), we must endure Winslet in the wish fulfillment plot of a feminist pioneer that never existed. Dull second act machinations include Sabine being rebuffed by laborers who don't want to work with a woman, one of Le Nôtre's former job applicants offering to help, and Sabine's clever creation of a pump to divert water from a river to the fountain and back.Romance between Le Nôtre and Sabine is postponed after Le Nôtre's displeasure over Sabine's decision to place plants in the garden outside of his ordered design. The spat between the two landscapers reflects the historical conflict between order and chaos, prevalent in landscape architectural circles at the time.The lugubrious plot continues to pitch forward and we are introduced to King Louis IV and his court. The King's brother, Duc Philippe d'Orleans, played by Stanley Tucci, is introduced as an effeminate bon vivant-bisexual, but also married to the German Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine. Tucci's character provides some atmosphere but does little to advance the plot.Rickman's King Louis IV turns out to be a rather low-key, unexciting good guy. When Sabine mistakes him for a common gardener, the King plays along and isn't upset with her for not recognizing him. He takes such a liking towards her, that she's invited to the court at Fontainebleau.Alex von Tunzelmann, writing in the The Guardian, notes another historical faux pas: "There is a painfully overwritten scene about aging women being like roses who lose their bloom, delivered for the benefit of Louis's mistress Madame de Montespan (Jennifer Ehle), who is being passed over for the implicitly younger and fresher Madame de Maintenon. This is not only bad, but wrong: in real life, La Maintenon was five years older than La Montespan."Nonetheless it's Montespan who introduces Sabine to the King and gives him a four-seasons flower, inspiring a conversation on the rose and its life cycle, a metaphor as Wikipedia tell us, "intended to warm him toward his mistress."If there's an antagonist here, it's Le Nôtre's wife, Françoise, who believes in sex outside marriage but only if she's on the receiving end. She has her Cruella de Vil moment when she visits Sabine and insists that Le Nôtre's interest in her is only a whim. What's more, two goons she's hired open flood gates, destroying all of Sabine's hard work. Le Nôtre is able to get out of the relationship with the evil Françoise, after finding a glove belonging to her at the flood site, implicating her in the dark deed. This is the dark moment at the end of the second act and we've waited an inordinate time to get to it.The road back of course has to be the consummation of the love between Le Nôtre and Sabine. This in turn allows her to confront the repressed memories of the long-ago death of her husband and young daughter, killed in a carriage accident. Sabine's project is finally completed and there's a big celebration. Game, set, match!There isn't one iota of humor in A Little Chaos and the actors go about their business with grim faces. Schoenaerts has little to do as the handsome landscaper and Winslet is unconvincing as a feminist heroine who we know never existed. Rickman fares little better as a darker side is never really suggested.Score this as a vanity project and an unfortunate swan song to a great actor's career. A Little Chaos does have good costumes so see it for that if you must see it at all.

lasttimeisaw 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.