(I intended to post this summary / my thoughts about the film earlier this weekend, but have been very tired. Here it is now, though. Spoilers ahead.)

My choice for this week’s film is La Reine Margot, or Queen Margot. I first watched it in the autumn of 2015 and it quickly became one of my favourite films. The film is adapted from La Reine Margot by Alexandre Dumas, which was written in 1845 and is based on historical events. Having watched the film, I downloaded the book for my kindle, but unfortunately I couldn’t achieve any sort of flow with the writing style. I suspect this has more to do with the particular translation I bought, and will look around for different translations.

The film is set in 1572. A brief onscreen summary explains that France is in the midst of a religious conflict between Catholics and Huguenots (Protestants). The Catholic royal family marries off their daughter Margaret of Valois (Margot) to Henri de Bourbon as a peace offering. However, the court is rife with political scheming, backstabbing, and treachery, and it seems superficial to bring about union by means of a marriage.

In the opening scene, we meet two men in an inn. They are the Protestant La Môle and the Catholic Coconnas. The more I watch this film, the more convinced I am that a truce between opposing faiths is portrayed in the genuinely passionate interactions between these two men. I think they are used as a contrast against the shallow union of marriage between Margot and Henri de Bourbon, as the two men grow from being rivals, to bonding at a time of sickness and injury, to eventually becoming indebted to each other in friendship.

Yet they are not so friendly in the beginning. In the inn, they are forced to share a bed. It is suggested that the town is fully booked due to the wedding of Margot and Henri de Bourbon, as thousands of guests will be in attendance. La Môle remarks that he did not come for the wedding, and that Margot is “an evil whore”. How his sentiment will soon change!

At the wedding, Margot portrays no emotion. Her face is like a beautiful porcelain sculpture. She silently protests by refusing to repeat the wedding vows. We see her lover, the Duke of Guise, trying to suppress his mirth at her reluctance to be wed. Eventually she is forced.

Margot on her wedding day.

The wedding scene is a visual spectacle. It is an explosion of rich colour – particularly deep blood red – and grandeur. Margot’s mother, Catherine de Medici, remarks that the wedding will fix everything. I wonder if she actually meant what she says here, given the events that are to unfold.

The wedding party is also interesting to witness. It is a scene of merriment and decadence as the guests enjoy dancing and a feast. It is a crowded display of elaborate hair and costumes, like a complex painting that has come to life. There is a fantastic breakdown and analysis of the costumes in this film over at The Costume Vault.

A man of powerful influence, Admiral de Coligny, believes he is the true ruler, as King Charles IX is sickly, weak, and suggestible. Indeed, Charles does not look a picture of competence and health. He is like an unkempt manchild, constantly being tended to by his nurse, and passively sitting at the sidelines whilst Coligny and his men debate their next course of action in the religious conflict. At the very least, Charles is aware that Coligny holds a lot of sway in what he, the King, decides. We see that Charles even places a great deal of trust in Coligny, and regards him like a father, despite Coligny being a Protestant.

Meanwhile, Catherine conspires with a hitman, Maurevel, to have Coligny murdered. The actress Virna Lisi was very well made up for this role. Her skin is a ghostly pallor, and she portrays an austere medieval figure, dressed always in black. She also seems to be a master schemer, and not to be underestimated. She has her family’s survival and posterity constantly in mind, and realises that Coligny has to be eliminated if she is to reassert her influence in the royal court. It is therefore in her interests to ensure that one of her three sons produces a male heir (as yet, there are no male heirs). It is clear that she favours her son Henri, the Duke of Anjou, and would rather that he ruled France instead of Charles.

After the wedding festivities, Margot has a rendezvous with her lover, the Duke of Guise. Their passion for each other is almost violent, but Margot’s confidante interrupts to say that Henri de Bourbon is on his way. Margot expected Henri to be with his mistress, but Guise mistrusts her. Margot hides him away whilst she converses with Henri.

Henri has come to forge an alliance with Margot for his protection. He fears he will be forced to convert or will be killed, and attempts to convince Margot by revealing she is despised and used as a pawn by her family. Margot seems browbeaten at Henri’s insistence that she must ally with him, and says “Maybe”. I wonder what her answer would have been had she been unaware that Guise was eavesdropping. Guise leaves shortly after Henri, and is resentful towards Margot. He loathes the Huguenots and may have felt betrayed at Margot’s reaction to Henri. Margot is left rather devastated, and resolves to feel better by finding a man to have a liaison with. She disguises herself by wearing a mask, and wanders through the streets with her confidante, Henriette.

It seems like the early hours of the morning in this scene, as the lighting is almost a white blue, like in the hours before dawn. We see La Môle sitting on the ground amongst many other Huguenot men. There is a sudden commotion, and La Môle is beaten and robbed of all his possessions except for a book. This book will be instrumental in a later portion of the film. Margot retrieves it and hands it to him. She then invites him to have sex in an alleyway, but does not remove her mask.

Later on, La Môle sells the book. It was his father’s, and he receives 100 gold coins for it. It is then that La Môle states his reason for being there, which is to see Coligny, an old friend of his father, Leyrac de la Môle. However, he is informed that someone has just attempted to assassinate Coligny, and that he is dead, or about to be.

The murder of Coligny was Catherine’s plan, and she uses the riotous outrage of the Huguenots to justify mass murder against them. We then see how she has orchestrated events to instigate war so that France can be cleansed of Protestants. She knows that Margot’s wedding was intended to be a smokescreen, as it would draw thousands of Protestants to the event. Charles realises what his mother has brought about, and in a state of emotional instability, he declares that all the Protestants must die. The viewer is aware that Charles doesn’t know what he wants and probably doesn’t mean what he says, but that his family have been manipulating him to extract his order of mass murder.

Preparations are made to strike on the Protestants, the vast majority of which are none the wiser. We realise that La Môle is in danger of being murdered along with the rest of them. Henri de Bourbon is whisked to safety. Margot, who was not involved in the murderous scheme but who had her suspicions, wanders through the streets in a horrified daze whilst the Protestants – her wedding guests – are brutally slaughtered. There is something truly blood curdling about this scene, as the Catholics seem to launch their assault in a serpentine manner. The guests are unaware, without weapons, probably intoxicated and/or sleeping, when soldiers suddenly descend on them. Really, what just and benevolent God would sanction such a thing?

The aftermath visually resembles a horrific medieval painting of Hell, with all the naked, contorted and bloodied corpses strewn in heaps. La Môle was wounded during the assault, but luckily flees into the arms of Margot, who fiercely protects him.

Margot tending to La Môle.

There are religious undertones to the scene where Margot tends to La Môle and washes his bloodied body. For some reason, it got me thinking of the woman who washed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair.

We later discover that Henri de Bourbon is being held captive, and is being forced to convert to Catholicism. Otherwise, the penalty is death. Margot urges him to convert in order to save his life. Henri’s reluctance in this scene juxtaposes the wedding ceremony. Just as Margot could not voice her wedding vows, now Henri barely manages to utter his conversion to the Catholic faith.

Despite La Môle being gravely injured, he nonetheless staggers off in pursuit of Coconnas, who had attempted to kill him during the slaughter. La Môle strikes Coconnas in the head with his sword. The blow does not kill him, but leaves him at the point of death. La Môle collapses, and the two men are later found by the “hangman” amongst a pile of dead corpses. The bodies of the Protestants had been shovelled into wooden carts, later to be dispensed into an open grave. La Môle and Coconnas were scooped up along with the dead. The hangman appears to be astonished at the sight of La Môle and Coconnas clinging to each other at the cusp of death, and brings them to the safety of his house, where he tends them back to health. At the hangman’s house, La Môle becomes aware of his seemingly coincidental encounters with Coconnas, and says “I cannot escape this man“. He then appears to make his peace with Coconnas (who is for the time being unconscious), now believing that God has put Coconnas in his path to make amends in the face of their different religious beliefs.

In another scene, Catherine is with the perfume maker who is performing an autopsy on a human corpse. The perfume maker dissects the brain, and inspects the grooves and folds as a way of divining future events. I have tried searching what this practice is called, but do not think I hit upon it. The closest I could find is haruspex, a practice of divination by examining the entrails of sacrificed animals. I wonder if this scene references the real Catherine’s rumoured interest in the Occult.

Catherine is aghast at the reading, as she is told that the future does not look promising for her three sons. Essentially she is told that despite having coordinated events for the St. Bartholomew’s massacre, Henri de Bourbon is still alive, and will eventually reign over France. Therefore, Catherine conspires to kill off Henri, by having the perfume maker poison the lipstick belonging to Henri’s mistress Charlotte.

Margot, who always appears to be on her guard and perceptive of her mother’s schemes, works out that Charlotte will unwittingly poison Henri. She stops Henri from kissing Charlotte at the very last moment, but unfortunately for Charlotte who has accidentally ingested the lipstick, she dies. A group of men enters the bedchamber, who had obviously been ordered to stay close by in anticipation of Henri’s death. However, they discover Charlotte’s corpse, and immediately set about stashing the evidence. They throw Charlotte over the balcony window, thereby making her death look like a suicide.

It seems like a significant amount of time passes, as we now see La Môle in search of Coconnas, who is now living with Margot’s confidante Henriette. Coconnas is overjoyed to see La Môle and beseeches him to strike him on the face. Coconnas expects and wants to be punished for his previous actions against La Môle. He displays an extraordinary amount of Catholic guilt in this scene. La Môle refuses, they embrace, and Coconnas has La Môle to dinner. Henriette learns that La Môle has been trying to reach Margot and Henri, as they are being held prisoner in the Louvre. Henriette arranges a secret meeting between Margot and La Môle, during which he realises that Margot was the masked woman in the alleyway.

La Môle and Margot secretly meet up. Jasmine has taken on a whole new significance for me ever since watching this super romantic scene.

We see that Henri is trapped in an awkward and tense friendship with King Charles. Henri appears to play along until his freedom is ensured, somehow. One day he and Charles lead a hunting party, as Henri has promised to teach Charles how to hunt boar using a spear. In an interesting contrast, a couple hundred Huguenots assemble in the woods, awaiting the King’s hunting party. The King and his men are not the only predator in the woods.

Charles is not the most capable of men, let alone Kings, and after a mishap is attacked by the boar. He screams for help, but his brother the Duke of Anjou looks on in cold amusement. Charles survives the attack, and later makes a terse quip to Anjou that he is not King yet, and that he is fully aware why Anjou did not intervene. The viewer gets the sense that Catherine would have approved of Anjou’s actions, as she favours him above all the other siblings, and clearly feels constrained in her exercise of power whilst Charles is still King. Meanwhile, the Huguenots retreat, feeling betrayed by Henri, as it was he who stepped in to save the King. They do not understand his motives at this point.

However, in another scene, we see that Henri attempts to negotiate with Charles for both his and Margot’s freedom. It seems that Henri is of the opinion that by keeping the King alive, flattering him, and giving into him, that the King will grant him this request. Charles does not consider the request in seriousness, and instead makes an emotionally unstable plea to Henri that he must stay.

I believe that Charles does not grant Henri’s freedom because at this time, Henri is an essential figure in maintaining Charles’s hold on the throne. At least Charles is aware of the lengths his family will go to in order to usurp the throne, and Charles seems to use Henri as a buffer in sending his brothers away to rule in other regions. Indeed it seems like Charles intends to neutralise the concentration of power between Catherine and his brothers by separating them. He intends to send the Duke of Anjou to Poland, and his younger brother the Duke of Alençon to Navarre.

Catherine is, however, wise to Charles, and is furious at his plans to split up the family. She retaliates by arranging to having Henri poisoned. As it happens, the book La Môle sold at the beginning of the film falls into the hands of the royal family. Catherine has the pages lined with arsenic, and plants it where Henri is likely to find it. Unfortunately, the Duke of Alençon discovers King Charles reading the book, licking his fingers, and turning the pages over (for some of the pages are stuck together). Charles remarks that Alençon looks very pale, like a ghost. Indeed, Alençon is witnessing the unintentional killing of his brother, the King.

The arsenic does not take hold until later on, during a farewell party for the Duke of Anjou. (It is during this party that Margot is assailed by her three brothers and the Duke of Guise. It is here strongly implied that Margot was previously sexually assaulted by her own brothers. This part of the scene is difficult to watch.) The attack on Margot is cut short when Charles collapses and has a fit. He only discovers what is happening to him when he finds that his beloved dog is dead. He notices the chewed up hunting book beside the dog, and has the perfume maker perform an autopsy on the animal. The perfume maker says that the death will be slow, but certain. Charles wrangles a confession out of the perfume maker, now knowing that his mother Catherine was behind the whole thing.

During another hunting party, Charles now urges Henri to flee to Navarre. He anticipates his death, and knows that Henri will be executed once he passes. I wonder if he sends Henri to Navarre to spite his mother. However, he still refuses to release Margot from the Louvre. Later on, Catherine displays regret and sorrow towards Charles in saying the book was not meant for him. She proceeds to throw the book into the fireplace, but catches a glimpse of the signature on the inside sleeve. This gives Catherine ammunition to frame La Môle for the King’s murder.

Henri enjoys a warm welcome at Navarre, declaring that all of his actions were to keep him alive. He renounces Catholicism, to the joy of his people. La Môle and Coconnas journey to the Louvre to retrieve Margot. However, they are both hunted down and sent to the Bastille.

Margot pleads with the dying Charles for La Môle’s pardon, and sits by his bedside for hours. The bedsheets are soaked in sweat and dyed red, for Charles is sweating blood. However, Charles is delirious and experiencing religious hallucinations, and denies Margot’s request until the very end.

When La Môle and Coconnas are sent to the executioner’s block, they hold fast to each other and have to be pulled apart. Their passing coincides with that of the King’s, and the Duke of Anjou returns from Poland. He and Catherine are triumphant, and vow to rule together (however, it would seem the perfume maker’s prophecy was true, as Anjou and Alençon produced no male heirs, and Henri de Bourbon went on to rule France in the end).

We see Margot standing between the corpses of La Môle and Coconnas. They have been beheaded. Margot gives the perfume maker an embalming mixture and asks him to preserve La Môle’s beauty. She rides off to Navarre carrying the head of La Môle, and a beautiful song plays.

Margot riding away to Navarre. Her dress is soaked with the blood of King Charles. 

Rating: 5 / 5. Also, the musical score to this film is excellent.

Favourite character: Duke of Anjou. Not entirely sure why! He had quite a magnetic on-screen presence and looked wonderfully Gothic and even slightly vampiric. He is obviously dangerous and quite evil, but I admired his ambition and resilience.

Least favourite character: Henriette de Nevers. She was always listening or watching whilst other people made out / had sex. She was generally quite annoying, and her behaviour during the massacre didn’t endear me to her.