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A picaresque chronicle of Laura, a peasant maid, and Sebastian, the young orphan in her charge, against a backdrop of overflowing passion and revolutionary intrigue in Europe at the twilight of the 18th century.

The black book you would rather be reading instead of watching this movie

A film too tidy for its blood-soaked era, saved by a magificent, swooning Lou de Laage

A well produced mystery period piece that spans important events (The French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte), the film is tripped by its barely coherent global narrative linking some good scenes. A viewer has to ask what the larger point is, and is left with abundant head scratching moments. On the other hand, this is also a good example of how making a mystery too mysterious (even though it might not really matter) can backfire.

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The Black Book

This is not good. The story is miserable. Absolutely miserable. Things just happen, reaching for predictable or ridiculous twists that are never explained. What kind of movie is this actually? It feels like it tells you nothing. Starts as sort of a conspiracy movie, but that heads nowhere because then it becomes a romantic movie, but that also goes nowhere because suddenly it&#39;s about the maid who&#39;s actually a princess and then it&#39;s an epic about war. Sounds thrilling, sounds like an epic movie? Well, it just sounds, because the result is incredibly dull. And bad.
The acting is just ok. 2 stars for th effort. It tries to be visually appealing, and it is most of the times. But not even that is enough (plus, for a movie where the characters are supposed to travel across Europe, most of the times it feels like they don&#39;t leave the rooms).

Lou de Laage suffers so beautifully as
both the maid Laura and her mother (a
Princess of one of the Italian States
in the French Revolution era). She is
too passionate for her own good in this
adaptation of the Camilo Catelo Branco
romance novel, too devoted to two wrong
men -- a womanizing Marquis and a young
boy of mysterious origin. One forsakes
her for an aristocrat (a finely measured
Jenna Thiam); the other, the sweet Sebastian,
forced to leave due to her depression and
ill-health, eventually forgets her. The film is adapted by Valeria Sarmiento,
ex-collaborator and widow of Raul Ruiz. I
am not really enamored with or familiar
with Ruiz&#39;s work,** and am distracted by how
meticulously and classically mounted each
scene is. The palaces are always perfectly
lighted and furnished. The camera is never
out of its deep focus, even when in motion. The &quot;squalid&quot; prisoners of the French
revolutionaries never have a hair out of
place; even fallen leaves are artfully,
symmetrically arranged. The editing is
exceptionally crisp; there is hardly an
ounce of fat. I wonder what the longer
version, cut into a miniseries, is like. The sole concession to chaos may be a
framed painting tilted too conspicuously. The critics call the director and the film
&quot;picturesque,&quot; and they certainly don&#39;t mean
an Otto Dix for this blood-soaked era that
also inspires the director&#39;s _Lines of
Wellington_. Lou de Laage is already
ravishingly pre-Raphaelite in her maid&#39;s
garb; when elevated to a Cardinal&#39;s daughter,
her outfits are just heart-stopping. The young
actress, one of the best of her generation,
single-handedly animates the emotional
turbulence of those 20+ years in this overly
tidy film when neither fellow actors nor
director seem willing to assert themselves --
just as her two characters chronicle the swift
rise and fall of so many in those times.* It hits
me during my second viewing just how
overwhelmingly sad the film is -- all those
missed chances, the way our passion and
memory betray us. Any reservation about the film is
swept away in the swooning final sequences. Sebastian has to play soldier and try to
assassinate Napoleon. Finally recognizing
it is him, Laura gives chase, and before she
can let out a cry her heart gives out. She
collapses at the foot of a ruined tree by
the cemetery, her all-green coat and auburn
hair already blending into the vegetation as
the camera rises, panning down through the
browned, falling leaves. *Even as many noblewomen lost everything,
including their lives, a new generation of
French generals and spouses achieved a
prominence that outlasted Napoleon. Indeed
the Corsican Ogre owed his early successes
to promoting gifted leaders with extremely
humble origins. **Streaming Ruiz&#39;s _Mysteries of Lisbon_
recently, it is obvious what that film,
with &quot;Father Dinis&quot; as a main character,
does wrong: it does not have a Lou de
Laage!

User reviews

The Black Book

What could have been...

The black book you would rather be reading instead of watching this movie

A film too tidy for its blood-soaked era, saved by a magificent, swooning Lou de Laage

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