Carried by Isabelle Adjani, this historic fresco broadcast this Monday, October 2, 2023 at 8:55 p.m., on Arte, is a rare case of a French blockbuster that has not sacrificed its ambitions on the altar of the great spectacle. Tele-Leisure explains to you.
End of the 1980s. Freed from the management of the Théâtre des Amandiers and directing plays and operas, Patrice Chéreau experiences frustration linked to cinema: his first four films only met with success, but he dreams critical and popular recognition. Surprising his world, Chéreau joins forces with the screenwriter of The partyDanièle Thompson, who suggested that he adapt a little-known novel by Alexandre Dumas, Queen Margot. Which must have, for them, the face of Isabelle Adjani. It is still necessary to convince the actress and to have, for this historical reconstruction, considerable resources. All this to culminate in the work broadcast this Monday, October 2, 2023 at 8:55 p.m., on Arte.
Claude Berri on the budget for La Reine Margot
Salvation comes from Claude Berri who offers to produce the film. Directing ambitious literary adaptations himself, such as Jean de Florette Or Uranus, he ardently desires to work with Patrice Chéreau. The latter does not hide his desire to make a different period film, dark and flamboyant, romantic and bloody. Influenced by the painting of Goya and Caravaggio; inspired as much by the civil war which then devastated Yugoslavia as by the Freed by Martin Scorsese; planning to give a neglected look to his characters while making them wear sumptuous costumes, he obtained from Berri a budget of 120 million francs (28.2 million euros). Co-produced with Germany and Italy, filmed between France and Portugal, Queen Margot is filmed from May 10 to December 3, 1993 with a minimum of 400 extras each day.
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Queen Margot… Or Queen Isabelle
“It was nice and warm everywhere we went. It was like a vacation that dragged on forever“, will testify Isabelle Adjani. The star, who has not shone in the cinema since Camille Claudel and refocused on her affair with the actor Daniel Day Lewis, dominates a cast including, from Vincent Perez to Pascal Greggory, loyalists of the director. Considered by Berri to play Henri de Navarre, Patrick Bruel was rejected by Chéreau who preferred Daniel Auteuil. These strong choices give coherence to a work that is both austere and carried by a baroque breath. Winner of a jury prize at Cannes and five Césars, including best actress for Adjani, the film attracted 2 million spectators in 1994, the year of its theatrical release. This is the biggest success on the big screen for Chéreau, who confided: “It’s with Queen Margot that I learned to make cinema.”
