MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Queen Margot’: Rich and Full of Verve

Hollywood doesn’t make many grand-scale costumey historical romances anymore--the kind of film that opens with a long crawl crammed with facts and dates and dynastical data. Movies are so good at taking us back in time that it’s a shame so few do.

“Queen Margot,” derived from an Alexander Dumas romance, is rich and full of verve. Director Patrice Chereau, an avant-garde theater and opera director best known for his massive modernization of Wagner’s Ring cycle in Bayreuth in the late ‘70s, keeps the action buzzing and the faces looming. It’s unusual to see a period film--it’s set in 1572, at the time of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre--that moves to a contemporary beat without sacrificing realism.

Chereau, with co-screenwriter Daniele Thompson, moves right into the torrid, horrific intrigue between the Catholics and the Protestants. He revels in the court intrigue, the scheming, the deviousness. You may not be able to sort out all the players and the plotting--at least not without an encyclopedia and penlight handy--but the broad historical outline survives.

And Chereau has cast actors with an operatic mien: Marguerite of Valois (Margot) is played by Isabelle Adjani, and her mother, Catherine of Medici, the Catholic Queen Mother of France, is played by Virna Lisi, who won the 1994 best actress award at Cannes for her performance. Their bond is obvious: Their faces are stamped with a larger-than-life furiousness.

The drama is propelled by the arranged (by Catherine) marriage of Margot to the Protestant Henri of Navarre (Daniel Auteuil). This union to reconcile the French turns out to be a ploy by Catherine to attract thousands of Protestants to Paris, where, six days after the wedding, they are destroyed en masse in the streets, in churches, in the Louvre.

The Saint Bartholomew Day’s Massacre, which D. W. Griffith also dramatized in “Intolerance,” is an orgy of bloodletting that threatens to flood both Catholics and Protestants in its wake. Margot, no friend of the Protestants, ends up their sympathizer. She forms an affection for Henri and a passion for the Protestant Lord of La Mole (Vincent Perez). She rebels against Catherine and her brother Charles IX (Jean-Hugues Anglade), and for a time becomes their captive.

It’s difficult imagining Margot in captivity. In grand romantic tradition, her only captivator is La Mole. It’s a passion that even survives his death. (Hint: She owes a lot to the court embalmer.)

Adjani, of course, is no stranger to grand passion in the movies. As Adele Hugo in Truffaut’s “Story of Adele H,” Adjani gave the definite crazed-by-love performance. Her Margot isn’t in the same league with her Adele--and the movie isn’t at all comparable to Truffaut’s as a study in passion--but Adjani still burns a hole in the screen. Probably no major actress in movie history has managed to look as perpetually, ravishingly youthful as Adjani. She looks a couple of years older than she did in “Adele H,” which came out almost 20 years ago.

Lisi, unrecognizable from her Hollywood days in ‘60s films like “How to Murder Your Wife” and “Assault on a Queen,” gives a terrific dragon-lady performance. With her black veils and high domed forehead, she’s a Medici right out of “Invaders From Mars.” Lisi has a harsh raspy voice without a shade of lilt or sensuality. Her dark rage is almost comic in its magisterial meanness but Lisi doesn’t camp it up. No one in the film does, with the possible exception of Anglade, who turns Charles IX into a reeling wreck--a bloodstained banshee of a king.

At a running time of 141 minutes--trimmed 23 minutes from the Cannes version--”Queen Margot” isn’t always brisk. The intrigues get a bit thick, and after awhile, the costume design (by Moidele Bickel) and the cinematography (by the great Phillipe Rousselot) overwhelm the court shenanigans. “Queen Margot” is far from great but it doesn’t make the standard mistake of most movie romances--it doesn’t confuse authenticity with dullness. These days a period movie that brings you unabashedly into the period is rare.

* MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes beheadings, garottings, and much bloodletting .

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‘QUEEN MARGOT’

Isabelle Adjani: Margot Virna Lisi: Catherine of Medici Jean-Hugues Anglade: Charles IX Vincent Perez: Lord of La Mole A Miramax Films presentation. Director Patrice Chereau. Screenplay by Chereau and Daniele Thompson. Cinematographer Phillippe Rousselot. Editors Francois Gedigier & Helene Viard. Costumes Moidele Bickel. Music Goran Bregovi. Production designs Richard Peduzzi & Olivier Radot. Set decorator Sophie Martel. Running time: 2 hours, 21 minutes.

* In limited release at Landmark’s NuWilshire, 1314 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 394-8099.