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Showing posts from June, 2016

Vatel: Versailles and the Individual

The 17th century is Hollywood's forgotten century. Whilst productions set in the Tudor era, or the Georgian era or even the Victorian, are aplenty, for some elusive reason, there aren't many that tackle the period between 1620 and 1700 (and the great majority of these rare movies are adaptations of the Three Musketeers ). On the other hand, when you turn your head towards the European panorama, you will find quite a larger number of movies set in the Baroque Period. One of these movies, and one of the most well-known (if only because it's shot in English instead of French or Spanish), is Vatel . Vatel (2000) is a period drama directed by Roland Joffé, the acclaimed British director of The Killing Fields (1984), The Mission (1986) and The Scarlett Letter (1996), amongst others. The movie tells the real, yet highly dramatized, story of François Vatel, and it premiered in the Official Selection of the Cannes Festival, gaining quite a lot of critical acclaim.