It's 17th-century France, and a common woman is hired to renovate the King's palatial gardens in Versailles, while falling in love with the talented man who hired her in the first place. Interested in watching a movie about gardening? Well, what if it stars Kate Winslet, the typically-smoldering Matthias Schoenaerts, and Alan Rickman pulling double-duty as director? A Little Chaos doesn't have to be as dull as it ultimately turns out to be. Period dramas can be passionate and lively and complicated, just look at recent movies like Far from the Madding Crowd (which features Schoenaerts) or as examples. Unfortunately, this film is about as enjoyable as watching the grass grow.
For a film that's largely about disrupting order and the status quo, A Little Chaos is incredibly reserved and careful. Winslet plays Sabine De Barra, a brilliant landscape artist whose designs challenge the immaculate order preferred by the more-famous architect, Andre Le Notre (Schoenaerts). When King Louis XIV (Rickman) commissions La Notre to design a glorious new garden in Versailles, he interviews De Barra but turns her down, recognizing she'll never fit in the conformist system he prefers. She's too spirited, too chaotic, but despite his reservations La Notre changes his mind and hires her, otherwise there'd be no movie. It isn't long before her free-thinking begins to affect La Notre, as well, and the two slowly become attracted to one another. This despite his manipulative wife (Helen McCrory) mucking things up at every turn, or Sabine's painful past that leaves her cold to the idea of new love.
Passionless and slow-moving, A Little Chaos makes the worst possible use of its stellar cast. Winslet gives a game, even enthusiastic performance as the plucky Sabine, but the character is ultimately bland and uninteresting. Few are better at playing the enigmatic hunk than Schoenaerts, but he struggles under the lame period wig and stiff mannerisms he's forced to take on. This just isn't the right role for him, but then again it's hard to imagine doing anything with the role. Nobody is particularly well-written here, and that goes double for Rickman's King Louis, who flits in and out oddly adds little. Allison Deegan's clunky screenplay is overstuffed with groan-worthy gardening metaphors and double entendres that no actor could make work. Better are the immaculate costumes and the lush production design, but at this point that's become standard for movies like this. The overly-mannered A Little Chaos would have been better served if it were a little more chaotic.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
