Hilary Swank: The Affair of the Necklace - Movie

The Affair of the Necklace
Cast :	Hilary Swank, Simon Baker
Director :	Charles Shyer
Studio :	Warner Home Video
Format :	Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby
Released Date :	November 30, 2001
DVD Released Date :	February 03, 2004
Language :	English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language)
Audience Rating :	R (Restricted)
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Customer Reviews

Rating
Date	June 25, 2005
Summary	Fascinating story, for those interested in Revolution......
Content	On page 203 of CITIZENS: THE CHRONICLE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Simon Schama, begins Chapter Six 'Body Politics' which gives an account of the tale upon which this film is based. The film is very close to this account. Schama himself would suggest that the retelling of an historical event is biased and depends on who is doing the telling. Several of the principle players left diaries or journals that provided their version of events. The trial of Cardinal de Rohan, Jeanne de La Motte, Nicole Le Guay and others concerning 'The Diamond Necklace Affair' was also recorded in court records and the newspapers of the day. Each of their lawyers presented a story that best represented their clients point of view. The sad truth is that the incident was only one of many that led to the demise of the monarchy, not "the cause" as the film suggests. What really happened? The French populace believed the worst of Antoinette and the whole incident proved to be another nail in her coffin. According to Schama, it was "her reputation for unaffected girlish sentimentality that made Louis, the Cardinal de Rohan, believe that he could restore his position at court through her favors..." This film is well enough acted the lead fellow (Simon.....) was a murder victim in L.A.CONFIDENTIAL, Brody is the Count de la Motte, and of course Swank who plays the 'Baronne de La Motte de Valois (as she called herself),is well known. Most of the supporting actors are also fairly well known to BBC fans, and Christopher Walken is wonderful as the occultist Cagliostro. This is not a swash-buckling tale (one silly sword fight), nor is is a Merchant-Ivory production, but it is far lighter than some of the 'realist' dramas produced by others in recent years. I won't buy it, but you can rent it from 'Netflix'.

Rating
Date	March 21, 2005
Summary	Lackluster historical drama
Content	The script and story weren't too bad, if you can get past that our protagonist was seriously misrepresented to be a lady trying to gain back her past estates when the reality of history is Jeanne was just a schemer and con woman, albeit a bit likeable. Her character was poorly played by a fabulous actress, Hilary Swank. The gigolo was the highlight performance of the film, and Robert Price as Cardinal Rohan was superb as always. Christopher Walken didn't fit the film, neither did Joely Richardson or Swank. They seemed so oddly out of place. If the screenwriters had made Jeanne just a little more like the lead protagonist/heroine in Philippa Gregory's WIDEACRE, you love to hate her and you love her, we all would have enjoyed the film better. Something just wasn't right with this film; it didn't hit its mark.

Rating
Date	January 23, 2005
Summary	Should Have Been Better
Content	This historical drama is very nearly fabulous - but just misses it. It is a famous tale of intrigue and scandal, one that lent fiery fuel to Marie Antoinette's bad reputation, which in turn led to her beheading. It is the story of Countess Jeanne St. Remy Valois, played by Hilary Swank in her first role after winning an Oscar for Boys Don't Cry. Perhaps the point was to see how Miss Swank could act while wearing a dress, but the results are mixed, to say the least. Made out to be completely sympathetic, the Countess sees her father murdered and their property taken from them, and she wishes to avenge the wrong done to them. Begging for an audience with the Queen (Joely Richardson is fabulous as Marie Antoinette), the Countess is rebuffed. Meanwhile, in an unrelated episode, the Queen's jewelers have designed a magnificent diamond necklace, but the Queen, though she allegedly covets the necklace, does not purchase it, leaving the jewelers in a tight spot. The Countess falls in with an attractive courtier and also forms an alliance with Cardinal de Rohan (played magnificently by Jonathon Pryce), who is out of favor with the Queen, and convinces him to buy the necklace to smooth things over between them. Of course, the Countess is planning on stealing the necklace so that she may live happily ever after. Through machinations such a stolen letterhead, mistaken identities and other deceptions, the story comes to a boil when the details of the scandal begin to see the light of day, and unravels the careers of everyone concerned (especially Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette). It is a gripping story in the right hands. Clearly director Charles Shyer's oeuvre is comedy, and he's written, directed or produced many fine ones, such as Private Benjamin, Irreconcilable Differences, Father of the Bride and The Parent Trap. But historical drama is not his long suit. The supporting cast, cinematography, costumes and art direction are superb and engaging, but Swank is the weak link in the equation. She is simply not skilled enough to handle the role - she is passionless and wooden, but fortunately there are many scenes without her that sizzle with drama. All in all, there is a great deal of entertainment here, and if you though Hilary Swank was good in Beverly Hills 90210, then you'll love her in this.

Rating
Date	December 13, 2004
Summary	Inaccurate historical recreation & what's more, it's DULL
Content	This film tries to make a believable drama out of what was in fact one of the most hopelessly bungled con jobs in history. While the Affair of the Necklace did, indeed, help to blacken Marie Antoinette's reputation, it didn't do all that much new damage; as Hilary Swank's character remarks near the end of the film, the king and queen had already pretty much ruined the monarchy well before 1785-86, when the events of the story actually took place. Overall the outlines of the plot are accurate in so far as the actual swindle is concerned, but the film has one unforgivable deliberate fault. The historical Jeanne de Lamotte-Valois (to use her correct birth name, Jeanne de St-Remy) was indeed descended from one of the many illegitimate sons of the Valois king Henri II, who died more than 200 years before Jeanne got her hands on that necklace. Jeanne's ancestor was legitimized and created baron de St-Remy; his offspring used that surname and not the royal Valois name--Jeanne herself used it to give herself some social leverage, and then added it to her husband's surname, Lamotte. Otherwise the film's representation of Jeanne's background is false. Nicolas de Lamotte was not a genuine count any more than Jeanne was the unfairly dispossessed daughter of a high-minded socially reforming baron killed by the government. Her father was a wastrel and drunkard who, before his early death, gambled away whatever was left of the family fortune (and it wasn't much to begin with). Jeanne had a brother and sisters, though none of them seems to have come to much good. Her mother was an illiterate peasant, not a member of the noble class. All the folderol about Jeanne's idyllic childhood in the family chateau, and her determination to win it back, was apparently added by the film's writer and producers to whitewash Jeanne's otherwise disreputable story. Simply put, she was an adventuress and a con woman whose real social standing was typified by the ease with which she and her husband found a prostitute to impersonate the queen during the midnight meeting with Cardinal de Rohan in the gardens of Versailles. While most of the events the film represents are accurate, the story thus rests upon heavily fictionalized foundations. The film's unevenness, however, is not exclusively for that reason. Its main drawback is Swank, who lacks the dramatic presence for a film of this nature. She looks nothing like an eighteenth-century Frenchwoman and fails to create a remotely believable characterization of such a woman. Some of the other characters succeed rather better, especially the House Minister, Baron de Breteuil, and Jeanne's lover, Retaux de Villette, who forged the real queen's correspondence with Cardinal de Rohan (a third excellent performance). Unfortunately the other weak spot here is Joely Richardson's Marie Antoinette. Not that Richardson is not a bad actress--for that matter, neither is Swank. But both are out of their element here. Richardson tumbles into every pitfall that awaits when as heavily-cliched an historical figure as Marie Antoinette is portrayed. Her performance gives the beleaguered queen no hint of humanity, though we know that the queen was in fact troubled by her unpopularity though she never understood how to reverse it. Richardson can be seen to much better advantage in the TV series "Nip/Tuck" and Swank in pretty much every other film she has ever made--just not this one. Costumes, sets and photography are excellent across the board. But the sound track is dominated by the music of Georg Frideric Handel, a Germano-British composer who died nearly 20 years before the events in the film took and whose splendid music by the 1780s was hardly ever heard outside England. Marie Antoinette was fond of works by Haydn, Gluck, Mozart and-auugh!-Salieri, and their music would have been much more appropriate here than Handel's.

Rating
Date	June 16, 2004
Summary	Make it a Blockbuster night
Content	There is an old saying in theater that instructs you not to "put a gun onstage in the first act if it is not going to go off in the second". By the same turn, do not introduce Christopher Walken into your movie unless you are going to send your script up on itself a little. Jonathan Pryce, Adrien Brody, and Walken all hit the right demi-tragic, mostly comic, tone, as do the minor characters. Everyone else, though, seems to have shown up thinking that they had been cast in "The Hours." "The Affair of the Necklace" has to be viewed with a generous suspension of disbelief, or with one's forehead protected for a lot of flat-palming. Ninette's final, "If I reached for anything that shown brightly..." speech- which is a bit too Shirley Temple for the rest of the movie- actually diminishes our sympathies for her and cuts the film's last thread of realism. Marie Antoinette's sub-guillotine, "well, maybe I was a bit excessive," flashback, is also a little inexplicable given the modern frame of the movie. Only on Google groups does one still find such negative and simplistic representations of her. And Louis XVI was more fully encompassed in "Start the Revolution Without Me". The scenery, however, especially at Versailles, is fantastic and- though I have doubts about the wisdom of Swank's "Annie"-style hair on the cover (given her character's orphaned status)- the movie generally fits in well with other flawless, high-end costume dramas. If it hadn't been "based on true events," a tag which subjects a movie to a greater deal of scrutiny than most can stand, I would have thought this one much stronger than it was. In the end, Pryce, Brody, and Walken do save the movie from itself, and generally make it an entertaining, if not accurate, weekend rental. As an addition to one's video library, however, it is best passed on.

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