There’s a lovely moment halfway through Alan Rickman’s film where he, playing King Louis XIV of France, is mistaken for a humble gardener by Kate Winslet’s designer Sabine. She is on the lookout for new flowers and plants, he is trying to find sanctuary after the death of the Queen. They chat a little but mainly enjoy the peace, silence and beauty that gardens can bring, before she finally realises her mistake and stiffens up. It’s a nice scene; playful, funny and langorous, and if it sounds a little dull, well, maybe it is.
The problem with Rickman’s film is that garden design is just not a terribly interesting subject matter. Those TV programmes which makeover people’s yards while they are at work is more exciting than this, and they aren’t exactly pulsating. To try and make up for the general lack of interest Rickman squeezes in some romantic affairs and a tragedy but still cannot raise the pace anything above slothful. Even visually the film is a disappointment. After all, the creation of Versailles should be wondrous to look at, but here we get, as Stanley Tucci’s hilariously camp character says, an awful lot of mud.
Winslet plays Sabine, a gardener who hates the constrictions and order that all of her rivals are using to create the great gardens of France. Matthias Scoenaerts is the man entrusted by The Sun King to bring the Garden of Eden to Versailles, and he has just the rigour demanded. However the project is too vast for just his one set of eyes, so he hires a helper. Sabine gets the job when she outrageously moves one of his pots from the middle of a circle to the edge. Thus begins a battle of wills, he determined to use maths, precise angles and circles, she preferring clashes of colour and shape. She wins a little project of her own, an amphitheatre with fountains which will take valuable resources and lots of muscle to build. However when Sabine begins to win the affection of Andre his wife Madame Le Notre (Helen McCrory) notices, and a woman spurned is a nasty sight.
Apart from the mistaken identity scene there is one other nicely played moment, a Sideways style speech where Sabine is talking to the King about roses, but it clearly becomes a metaphor for something else, in this case a woman’s fading beauty. These scenes apart though it’s a largely lifeless affair, with lots of walking through the woods, pointing at trees and discussing nature. Tucci has a blast as a hilariously camp member of the court, and plenty of acting is worthy, but there’s a frustrating sense that whatever Rickman is trying to say it’s taking him an awfully long time to say it.
Visually it’s something of a disappointment too, Versailles is clearly Ham House on the Thames, and nothing in the film looks or feels remotely French, which is odd. Even a scene where Winslet stares pleadingly into a wood with bluebells covering the ground, which should be arrestingly vivid, is oddly flat to look at.
Overall verdict: Released in time for gardening week this resembles a pretty made for tv programme more than a fully formed film. Terribly worthy, but frustratingly lifeless, which is a shame.
Reviewer Mike Martin