You will probably come out of A Little Chaos being amused at the light fun it sometimes pokes at the characters
Since I have a sneaking fondness for landscape gardening, and a newfound interest in Matthias Schoenaerts (who had previously failed to impress me in 2012’s Rust and Bone, a grim, dour film by Jacques Audiard), I may have to warn readers that it is quite possible that I am unduly biased towards “A Little Chaos”, a charming period drama starring Schoenaerts as André Le Nôtre – the famous French landscape artist who designed most of the gardens at Versailles.
Directed by Alan Rickman, a wonderful actor himself, A Little Chaos, which, barring Le Notre’s character, is mostly fictitious, takes a great many liberties with its characters, most of whom behave fairly anachronistically, a choice that pays off due to the singular talents of the ensemble cast which includes Rickman himself as Louis XIV, and the wonderful, luminous Kate Winslet as Sabine de Barra an anomalous (completely fabricated) female landscape gardener who is reluctantly recruited by Le Notre to help him in the immense task of designing the gardens at Versailles.
The strengths of this film, quite frankly, lie in the attention to detail given towards the process of manufacturing landscapes, and in the relationship between the characters of Le Notre and de Barra, both of whom begin as fairly enigmatic creatures who passionately love creating gardens (albeit in very different styles), but evolve to become so much more than just creatures driven by ambition.
As you might imagine, being selected by Louis XIV to create the gardens at Versailles is a task that no single person can accomplish on their own. Le Notre, who carries with him the weight of his father’s success in the same profession, is forcibly propelled towards making gardens classically, holding symmetry and proportion above all as models. When le Barra moves one of his carefully placed urns at her interview, to interrupt the precise pattern it was mean to celebrate, Le Notre takes a leap of faith that results in the beginning of the oddest of partnerships and a very tender romance.
There are patchy bits in A Little Chaos, but they didn’t really bother me. Most of the characters are as well drawn as the two main ones, making the world of the film come alive, fleshing out life at the French court in contrast to the gritty struggle of making vast gardens that are equal to those very elite. Beautifully filmed and depicting several poignantly flawed relationships, A Little Chaos may not delight you quite as much as it did me, but, at the very least, you will probably come out of it being amused at the light fun it sometimes pokes at the characters it also lovingly renders.
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