QUEEN MARGOT / La Reine Margot
West Coast Premiere (restored version) • Historical drama • France, 1994
DCP • 1.85 • Dolby SR • Color • 162 min
Directed by: Patrice Chéreau
Written by: Danièle Thompson, Patrice Chéreau, after the Alexandre Dumas novel
Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot
Film Editing: François Gédigier, Hélène Viard
Original Score: Goran Bregovic
Produced by: Claude Berri (Renn Productions)
Coproduced by: D.A. FILMS, France 2 Cinéma
Cast: Isabelle Adjani (Marguerite de Valois, aka Queen Margot), Daniel Auteuil (Henri de Navarre), Jean-Hugues Anglade (Charles IX), Vincent Perez (La Môle), Virna Lisi (Catherine de Médicis), Dominique Blanc (Henriette de Nevers), Pascal Greggory (Anjou)
International Sales: Pathé Distribution • patheinternational.com
US Distributor: Cohen Media Group • Cohenmedia.net
US Release: May 9, 2014
Sister of King Charles IX, Margot is young, beautiful, and Catholic. She is to be sacrificed on the altar - the wedding altar - to the coarse, petulant, and Protestant Henri, King of Navarre. The marriage has been arranged to help end the interminable religious wars that plagued 16th century France. Disgusted by Henri, Margot seeks solace in the form of love from someone well outside a court infested with intrigues, betrayals, and royal poisoners. But as Protestant aristocrats pack the city to attend the wedding, an assassination attempt triggers a bloody chain of events that will lead to wholesale slaughter. Sprawling, savage, fearless, sensual, and ingenious, this restless retelling of a grisly chapter in French history is stacked with career-defining performances, including Isabelle Adjani’s insatiable yet vulnerable Margot, and Virna Lisi’s rapacious and unrepentant Catherine de’ Medici. COLCOA is pleased to present this digitally restored director’s cut of Queen Margot to honor one of France’s most acclaimed filmmakers, Patrice Chéreau, who passed in October, 2013.
"The cultural world is in mourning and France loses an artist... who is its pride across the world." These were the words spoken by French president Francois Hollande at the news of the death of writer/director Patrice Chéreau. His best known work, Queen Margot, claimed the Jury Prize at Cannes and a mantle full of César awards, but many will be more familiar with A Wounded Man, which won him a best original screenplay César in 1984; the moving Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, which earned him a best director César in 1998; Intimacy, (2001) which walked away with the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival; Son Frère (World Premiere COLCOA 2003), nominated for a Golden Bear; and Gabrielle (COLCOA 2006), nominated for a Golden Lion. Smitten with theater, at the age of nineteen he founded a theater company, and directed his first opera at twenty-five. His bold, controversial staging of The Ring in Bayreuth in 1976 is recognized as having changed the direction of modern opera. But it is Chéreau’s work as a filmmaker that will endure as a testament to his extraordinary passion, his abiding compassion, and his ability to look life in the eye, without blinking.
“Not since Eisenstein's imaginative expressionism has a film ravaged tradition and brought the past into focus with such devastating energy.”
- Angus Wolfe Murray EYE FOR FILM
“An intensely involving piece of film drama.”
- James Travers FILMSDEFRANCE
“Bloody and brutal, Queen Margot takes pains to avoid the picturesque vacuity of big-screen historical epics.”
- Edward Guthmann SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
