One Hundred Ways To Lose Your Lover? Forget the Black Widow and the Praying Mantis they're SO Paleolithic, take a leaf out of Marguerite's book, boff them, have them thrown from the eponymous tower into the Seine with an archer standing by to place an arrow where it will do the most good when they surface. Alexander Dumas was something of a Graham Greene in the number of times his work has been adapted for the screen and/or theatre and television - the figure is now approaching 200 with no end in sight - and Gance himself had a crack at La Reine Margot but alas, Daniele Thompson wasn't around to whip up a screenplay. As someone familiar with the Rue de Nesle, where it's small theatre often stages the works of Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, I had an extra interest in this late work from Gance and I have to say that it fascinates on several levels notably the use of colour which the French cinema had not explored in great detail at the time; if it isn't just a faded print I saw then Gance's use of muted pastels where others would have used bold oils is to be applauded as his eye for filling the frame with detail and achieving a fine blend of gentry and peasant. The principal setting would not be out of place in a Robin Hood movie and indeed with all the lingering shots of stone staircases punctuated by burning torches mounted on wall brackets one half expects to come upon Errol Flynn striking sparks of Basil Rathbone. The plot itself is a heady brew of over-heated intrigue, passion, lust, betrayal which is so much poppycock but Michel Bouquet throws in a nice cameo as a slightly ditsy Louis X and it's interesting to know that not only did the French invent tennis but squash as well. One for connoisseurs.
Review of La tour de Nesle
