A LITTLE CHAOS — A Little Too Little

Rating: 2

A LITTLE CHAOS, not to be too precious about it, could have used a little more actual chaos. This handsomely executed historical drama is by turns ponderous and interesting, but interesting in a removed, unengaged fashion that renders the whole far less than the sum of its parts. Directed by co-star and co-writer Alan Rickman, both it and Rickman have a deft way with fine performances, but not with sustaining a compelling narrative. Darn.

The chaos of the title has to do with how to lay out the formal gardens at Versailles, currently under construction by the Sun King himself, Louis XIV (Rickman at his imperious best). The task of designing this exercise in conspicuous consumption has fallen to Le Notre (Matthias Shoenaerts), the heir to a landscape gardening legacy whose luster is enhanced by having the king as a patron. Le Notre, wise enough to know the job is too big for him, engages the services of Mme. De Barra (Kate Winslet), a widow an unconventional taste for letting nature be just the slightest bit askew. Together they weather the intrigues of the court, the more insidious intrigues of Le Notre’s fickle wife (Cathy Belton), and their growing affection for one another.

So many themes with which to work, but the film takes them up one a time and quickly sets each aside in favor of another. It never claims to be historically accurate, but does offer a few glimpses into court intrigue, including Louis’ plan to keep the aristocracy even more under control by forcing them to relocate to the suburbs once his new palace in completed. De Barra’s heady whisking into the midst of the court itself offers a tourist view of the underlying insecurities of the gilt and satin splendors, but, as with everything else, there are more hints than the trenchant social commentary or study of the conflict between art for art’s sake and the uses (and misuses) said art is heir to.

Rickman, an avowed socialist, has the ironic distinction of being born to play the aristocrat, with the effortless noble bearing of one who walks in the world as its rightful master.When he offers a macaroon to Le Notre, his inflection is that of a man offering not just a pastry, but the honor of being offered it by his betters. His much betters. Yet there is no conceit to him, there is even a hint of wit. He and

Stanley Tucci, as Louis’ gay brother, the Duc d’Orleans are the best thing in the film, with Tucci not quite prancing, though definitely preening, his way through the story bedecked in glittering lace and an attitude that is a study in refined camp.

Winslet, the putative star of the piece, delivers a suitably passionate, determined performance as a woman fighting fashion and 17th-century gender expectations. Why her hair must be so decidedly ratty, even in formal situations may speak to De Barra’s obsession with horticulture. Or not. Shoenaerts, for his part, is suitably enigmatic in a formal, self-contained character that may or may not be the embodiment of the era’s mania for mathematical order in all things, even a garden.

A LITTLE CHAOS is a minuet, and plodding one at that, when it should be a either a gavotte or a resounding symphony. Almost a compelling character study. Almost a mediation on the class structure. It’s almost a good movie.