A Little Chaos sounds good on paper: great cast and lush period piece, but I found it extremely difficult to just sit back and enjoy the movie. Even though A Little Chaos begins with a disclaimer that the story is fictional, because I had a moderate understanding of French history, gender and court politics, I kept questioning the plot.
Kate Winslet convincingly plays a widow/landscaper who interviews for a job at the yet to be created Versailles with a historically renown landscape architect played by the Europe’s latest hot actor, Matthias Schoenaerts, who also appeared in Far from the Madding Crowd. Immediately they butt heads. He esteems order, and she does too, but with room for inspiration from nature’s wildness as represented by her willingness to get sweaty and her hands dirty. If everyone looked as good as Winslet working with his or her hands, everyone would do it. A Little Chaos does not reveal how a woman ended up with the expertise and connections to get such an interview. Unsurprisingly she gets the job, and through working together, they begin to admire each other.
A Little Chaos loses focuses and tries to focus on subplots that overtake and dominate the romantic plot. A Little Chaos represents the French court as a place where eventually every one is affable, finds their individual path to healing, love, understanding and emotional solidarity by trying to recreate paradise except for one slutty bitch who is married to the romantic lead’s character. It is interesting that a movie that features an unconventional heroine has to make her enemy another woman. Not all women are portrayed negatively. There is the inexplicable housemate who encourages Winslet and pretends to be her servant. How does Winslet’s character know her? Who knows. There is one brief moving scene where the women of the court finally meet Winslet and break all conventional conversational barriers to basically have group therapy so they can share and overcome their grief. It is a moving scene, but again strained my suspension of disbelief.
I’m sure that people in court could be kind and normal, but there is so little political and social maneuvering that it is astounding. Would they have been so kind and open with Winslet’s character if she really existed at that time? The eternally fabulous Stanley Tucci reprises his role in The Devil Wears Prada except he takes his character back in time and is now the king’s relationship pioneering brother. He is friendly and welcoming to Winslet. He and every member of the court are just delighted to make this “nobody” feel at home. The Court is like NYC for Midwesterners. Here is where the dreamers and the misfits can finally be accepted and normal.
I found Xena: The Warrior Princess’ anachronisms and relationship dynamics to be less baffling because they were not rooted in reality, but A Little Chaos adheres just close enough to the historical period to make me wonder what was real and what wasn’t. It is also jarring to have Winslet encourage landscaping arts to be “uniquely French” when there isn’t one French actor in the bunch, or if there is, I missed that French person. If A Little Chaos had completely embraced an alternate parallel universe fantasy of France, I think that it could have been more convincing.
It also doesn’t help that the romance feels a little forced. I know that the two landscapers are supposed to get together, but in one scene with Winslet and Alan Rickman, who plays Louis XIV and directed A Little Chaos, in a garden, the chemistry was so smoldering, it immediately undercut whatever poor Schoenaerts was trying to do.
A Little Chaos needed a little logic and focus or even more of a departure into historical fantasy to become a success. Instead it is a baffling, but lush period piece that strains believability and fails to enchant its audience.