A Little Chaos: leads historical accuracy down the garden path

A Little Chaos (2015)
Director: Alan Rickman
Entertainment grade: D
History grade: C-

In the 17th century, André le Nôtre was considered the greatest landscape architect in France. He designed or co-designed gardens at Versailles, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Fontainebleau and Chantilly, as well as the Tuileries in Paris.

Style

The film begins in Paris in 1682, with a tiny French prince soiling himself at court. “Your majesty, I’ve stink in my linen,” he tells Louis XIV (Alan Rickman). Alas, it’s downhill from here. Moody hunk André le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts) interviews a bunch of wigs for a gardening job at Versailles. In real life, Le Nôtre began work at Versailles in 1661; he was pushing 70 by 1682, twice Schoenaerts’s age in the movie. Among the wigs is the blatantly fictional Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet), who fails to impress Le Nôtre with her fluffy hat and fluffier ideas. “Are you a believer in order? Order over landscape?” barks le Nôtre. “Order seems to demand that we hark back to Rome or the Renaissance,” she replies. To be fair to the film, order versus chaos was the central conflict in 17th and 18th-century garden design: the formal parterres, topiary and orderly construction of French and Italian gardens versus the naturalistic (yet still contrived) rolling hills and reflecting lakes which were pioneered by Capability Brown in Britain in the mid-1700s. Humiliated, De Barra skulks off home, showing the good sense to bung her hat in the composting bin on the way.

Gardening

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Le Nôtre may have loathed De Barra’s plans, but the film needs him to give her the job anyway – and can’t really be bothered to think of a good reason he might do so. So he follows her home because he just does, and lights all the candles in her private boho cliché garden. “This abundance of chaos – is this your Eden?” he asks, even though it all looks quite neat: the film has effectively given up on its own theme already. At Versailles, De Barra will build the extremely orderly Bosquet de la Salle du Bal, also known as the Bosquet des Rocailles. It was really laid out by Le Nôtre between 1680 and 1683.

People

More characters turn up, though you may wish they wouldn’t. Le Nôtre has a mean wife (played by Helen McCrory), who wants to destroy him and De Barra for no apparent motive other than that the film needs some sort of villain. Le Nôtre’s real wife, Françoise Langlois, bore him three children who all died young; she probably wasn’t evil. Then there is Philippe, Duke of Orléans (Stanley Tucci), a character with no function and no arc at all. “I simply do as I’m told. Even down to marrying large German women,” he says, indicating the Princess Palatine (Paula Paul). The film is right that Orléans was probably gay, but it does go on about it rather – and to no effect.

Dialogue

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The dialogue is relentlessly dire, lacking any subtlety or feel for the 17th century. Le Nôtre thinks his marriage should make him “feel special”; his wife says things like: “André, I feel us at the edge of something here.” A gardener tells De Barra: “You need to be the boss man.” There is a painfully overwritten scene about ageing 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.

Romance

Almost everything – the sight of a wheel, a loud sound, construction work – triggers a flashback for De Barra, who is carrying a dark secret about a lost child. It’s like Gravity, but on Earth. “Do you admire the master [Le Nôtre]?” Louis XIV asks De Barra. She replies, inexplicably: “He is the most complete person I know.” Since his character remains opaque, we’ll have to take her word for it. There is no chemistry between Le Nôtre and De Barra, but you know they’re going to have to have sex eventually. When they finally get down, it triggers yet more heavy-handed lost-child flashbacks, and is so boring even Le Nôtre falls asleep.

Verdict

Solid performances from some extremely talented actors can’t coax this wilted blossom back to life.