Lost ,nobody will deny,is it a sleeper, a great forgotten work?I have my doubts.
"Lady Oscar",a Japanese production, was never commercially released in Demy's native France.It's a movie so hard to see I had to wait twenty-four years.Was it worth the wait?Partly,but only partly.It's hard to recognize Demy's touch is these historical adventures.The action takes place in the years before the French revolution and I really wonder why Demy used English actors to play Marie-Antoinette,Madame de Polignac,Louis the Sixteenth et al.The historical facts do not rise above the historical clichés:the hamlet of the Queen,the necklace case,her affair with Axel Fersen.Sacha Guitry did much better with his "si Versailles m'était conté";humor is definitely lacking here.The characters of fiction are essentially walk ons ,mainly in the first half.Then Lady Oscar begins to hit her stride,with feminist accents dear to Agnès Varda (Demy's wife and producer).But the end is disappointing as if Demy had planned a sequel(there was a Japanese cartoon,featuring the Lady Oscar -the woman raised and dressed as a boy-,some years after but targeted at the children's market).
So what makes this movie worthwhile though?The dazzling costumes,Demy's refined style,all the wonderful ball scenes.The form is a feast for the eye and almost entirely overshadows the content.Lambert Wilson,who was to become a famous actor in the eighties and nineties has a cameo :he's the insolent soldier.
That said,the great lost Demy movie is not "Lady Oscar" but his stunning "pied piper" (1972)
"Lady Oscar",a Japanese production, was never commercially released in Demy's native France.It's a movie so hard to see I had to wait twenty-four years.Was it worth the wait?Partly,but only partly.It's hard to recognize Demy's touch is these historical adventures.The action takes place in the years before the French revolution and I really wonder why Demy used English actors to play Marie-Antoinette,Madame de Polignac,Louis the Sixteenth et al.The historical facts do not rise above the historical clichés:the hamlet of the Queen,the necklace case,her affair with Axel Fersen.Sacha Guitry did much better with his "si Versailles m'était conté";humor is definitely lacking here.The characters of fiction are essentially walk ons ,mainly in the first half.Then Lady Oscar begins to hit her stride,with feminist accents dear to Agnès Varda (Demy's wife and producer).But the end is disappointing as if Demy had planned a sequel(there was a Japanese cartoon,featuring the Lady Oscar -the woman raised and dressed as a boy-,some years after but targeted at the children's market).
So what makes this movie worthwhile though?The dazzling costumes,Demy's refined style,all the wonderful ball scenes.The form is a feast for the eye and almost entirely overshadows the content.Lambert Wilson,who was to become a famous actor in the eighties and nineties has a cameo :he's the insolent soldier.
That said,the great lost Demy movie is not "Lady Oscar" but his stunning "pied piper" (1972)