The Princess of Montpensier/ La Princesse de Montpensier

BACK IN THE 1960s, directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer formed the nouvelle vague partly as a reaction against the staid French cinemas they described as “le cinéma de papa”. It hasn’t gone away, you know.

Bertrand Tavernier, a beloved film-maker, born a decade or so after most of the new wave directors, has, with this historical drama, delivered an undeniably handsome piece of work. It’s a shame it’s just that teeny bit dull.

Taken from a story by Madame de La Fayette, the film concerns a princess (Mélanie Thierry) who, during the 16th-century conflict between Huguenots and Catholics, is forced to marry a man she does not love. At first she feels able to adapt to the arrangement. When, however, her previous admirer (Gaspard Ulliel), a dashing war hero, drops by her chateau, she realises that she still has feelings for the blade. Meanwhile, a Protestant turncoat, who is acting as her tutor, tries – despite also being besotted with the princess – to calm everyone down.

La Princesse de Montpensierdoes have its fair share of feisty swordfights and, carried off with much gusto, those sequences suggest that Tavernier could make a very good Dumas adaptation if he wanted. But his interest here is more in verisimilitude. The film is thick with research: every scene is stuffed with authentic gestures, convincing costumes and believably eccentric social conventions.

Trying to read the characters’ motivations from beneath the fug of contemporaneous manners proves to be a diverting challenge. Emotions seems all the more convincing when they break free.

Unfortunately too much of The Princess of Montpensier is taken up with intricate conversations in gloomy corridors and on gloomier staircases. The picture also suffers from the personality vacuum at its heart. Thierry speaks her lines clearly and carries herself with grace, but, God bless her, she has about as much charisma as a bag of wet cabbages. There must have been more interesting women to fight wars over.

Still, as one might expect from Tavernier, this is a classy production with a sumptuous sheen to it. Papa will get on quite nicely with it.