The costume vault

This week I'll briefly expand on more of the recommendations I've been posting on social media so you'll be able to make a more informed decision when choosing your choice entertainment for the afternoon. This time I'll cover the recommendations I made from April 10th to April 19th. Recommendation for APRIL 10th Tiny disclaimer: I die for the Baroque aesthetic, so I’m not very impartial of the assessment of this film. With that out of the way: let’s move forward with today’s recommendation. VATEL is a story that talks about the individual and free will in a world where everyone is keenly aware of their place and the need to stay in it. It’s talking about a world divided into two groups: those who have (the King and Court), and those who don’t (the working classes). And these two ideas are the central guidelines that dictate the visual design for this movie. That division is created mainly through the costume design, by establishing very clear looks for both groups, the ...

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. ...