This is the feeling I get from this movie. Even the writers felt the same need to make Barbe Nicole in need of male attention and companionship of some form or other. I actually resent the angle that this movie takes. Instead of focusing on this women's determination, resilience and ingeniousness, we are served this sob tale of a young woman's curbed romantic life, as she loses her beloved husband (who we later find out was not much of a gem) and then she has to deal with men trying to "protect" her from herself. She becomes some sort of early feminist icon with some very bad dialogue - the wheel and the hierarchy and how she must project strength as a woman amidst men who only see the weakness of her sex. That scene in court with Bohne coming to her defense with his miraculous "solution" I wanted to scream so much at him... She has a great comeback but how did the trial end though and why?
Plus the movie compresses quite a few years and I doubt a woman of that era would have allowed her maid or housekeeper to call her by her first name. That one really irked me.
Anyway, I got really tired of Francois and all the flashbacks and the musings and the wistful stares. It's great as a period movie, it hits all the regular beats, but I found the characters and the story unsatisfactory.
