A Little Chaos
Director: Alan Rickman
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 1.5
Skilled gardener/widow Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet) is commissioned by landscape architect André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts) to work on an outdoor ballroom for King Louis XIV's (Rickman himself) Versailles project. It's not only historically questionable, it also forgets about the "chaos" part of the title: nothing of dramatic significance happens until the third act when Rickman and his fellow screenwriters throw in a 'jealous' wife (Helen McCrory) to (poorly) sabotage Sabine's work-in-progress ... and concludes on a tacky note with a flashback to Sabine's (cheating) husband and innocent daughter perishing in a carriage accident. The title should have been Precious Little Chaos, but who'd want to see that? This is officially the last directorial work from the great Rickman (he passed away in early 2016) who, no matter what he was in, was always magnetic.
