Ridicule
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DVD details
Actor: Bernard Giraudeau, Charles Berling, Fanny Ardant, Jean Rochefort, Judith GodrècheBrand: Buena Vista Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-01-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Miramax
DVD Reviews of Ridicule
DVD Review: The Mystique of Wit and Ridicule
Summary: 4 Stars
The first time we glimpse Madame de Blayac (Fanny Arendt)she is naked and servants are blowing white powder all over her body and face to give her the semblance of a flawless complexion. We do not know it yet but this may as well be a war painting ceremony. She and her accomplice, the appropriately named L'Abbe de Vilecourt, are two of Versailles most powerful and viscious social figures. If they decide that you are witty then you are invited to become a part of their coterie, but if you are dull then they heap their ridicule on you in one of their public disgracing ceremonies. Madame de Blayac and Vilecourt seem to thrive on their capacity for cruelty; it is the measure of their power.
Into this world trots an unsuspecting young country lord named Malavoy (Charles Berling) who desperately needs funds to drain the swamps on his estate to prevent his peasants from dying of mosquito related illnesses. The only chance he has of receiving the necessary funds is if he can gain an audience with the king. However, a whole world of courtly proprieties stand between Malavoy and the king. In short, to get to the king Malavoy must negotiate Madame de Blayac's and Vilecourt's crucible of wit.
With his natural gift for verbal display Malavoy immediately impresses Madame de Blayac and her circle but she is not the type to do anything for anybody unless she gets something out of it herself and it soon becomes clear to Malavoy that Madame de Blayac will require that he tend to her private as well as her public pleasures and in return she will see to it that he get his audience with the king.
Meanwhile en route between court and country Malavoy is robbed and left for dead on the road. A country doctor (Jean Rochefort) finds him and helps him to recover at his country estate where Malavoy falls immediately smitten with the doctor's beautiful daughter Mathilde (Judith Godreche). Malavoy and Mathilde immediately hit it off despite the fact that the teenage Mathilde is in the process of negotiating a marriage with a man five times her age. But as soon as Malavoy is healthy enough he must return to the court in order to press his case once again and that means a return to the courts vices and follies and, of course, to Madame de Blayac.
As far as Malavoy is concerned as soon as he has his chance to present his case to the king his obligation to Madame de Blayac will be over but Malavoy does not realize that the game is over only when Madame de Blayac says it is over. And once Madame de Blayac discovers that Malavoy has a woman in the country her revenge is swift.
Malavoy's natural wit shines against the opulent artificial surfaces of Versailles and he defeats the overly crafted wit of Vilecourt time and again but we fear that these are only small skirmishes in a war of the wits that he cannot win. We just hope that Malavoy will be able to escape this vile world before its too late.
The most interesting scenes show a Malavoy that is not immune to the allures of court life, wealth and power and even of Madame de Blayac. And it is in these scenes that we wonder just how far he will go to get what he wants and whether there will ever be any turning back once he gets there. We see a secession of lords and barons who have their own cases to plead ridiculed and turned away and we know Malavoy's turn will eventually come, for ridicule is the courts way of keeping the insiders in and the outsiders out and Malavoy is only a guest in this world.
The ending is a surprise. It comes a little abruptly and yet it also seems perfect. The mystique of wit and ridicule (of arbitrary power or power exercised arbitrarily, and of the snobberies of high society) haunts the minds of those who were wounded as well as wowed by it even after the regime that sponsored it has vanished.
Description of Ridicule
RIDICULE - DVD MovieIn Patrice Leconte's cool, precise moral comedy Ridicule, the corrupt, sycophantic court of King Louis XVI is invaded by a provincial nobleman, Ponceludon de Malavoy (Charles Berling), who with the help of his own sharp tongue, the coaching of the retired courtier Marquis de Bellegarde (Jean Rochefort), and the love of the Marquis's beautiful, nature-loving daughter (Judith Godrèche) hopes to win funds for his project to drain the fever-infested swamps of his homeland. But first he has to get by the cunning, sexually manipulative Madame de Blayac (Fanny Ardant, imperious and superb) and her waspish, priestly ally, the Abbot de Vilecourt (Bernard Giraudeau).
As shaped by screenwriter Rémi Waterhouse, Ridicule is a kind of dashing verbal swashbuckler in which duels aren't fought with swords, but with the equally fatal weapon of words--rapier wit in its most literal sense. Laconte directs with an appealing elegance and a scathing sobriety as he unfolds a fable that could just as easily take place in a Wall Street boardroom, a Park Avenue executive suite, or a Hollywood commissary. --Dave Kehr
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