The Affair of the Necklace: nothing to get hot under the collar over
This 2001 film centred on one of history's wildest scandals. So how did they manage to make it so dull?
Thursday, 05 November 2009
Director: Charles ShyerEntertainment grade: DHistory grade: C+
The Affair of the Necklace was a scandal in pre-revolutionary France.
Conwoman Jeanne de La Motte stole a 2,800-carat diamond necklace, The Slave's Collar, by convincing the Cardinal de Rohan that Queen Marie-Antoinette wanted it.
Family
In 1767, Jeanne is in the middle of an idyllic childhood, complete with doting parents, an outdoor swing and a massive fancypants chateau. For no obvious reason, royal soldiers turn up, burn all the furniture and shoot her beloved dad. It's a long way from the real Jeanne's experience. Her father was a drunk who died of natural causes. The family was ruined not by the royals but by her own mother, a former servant, who spent all their money, then forced her children on the streets to beg. Picture the script meeting: "Hey, guys, we've got to make Jeanne more sympathetic. Lose the genuinely tragic childhood of poverty and abuse – who cares about that stuff? Instead, make her a spoiled brat with enormous unearned privilege, who presumes it's her right never to have to do an honest day's work. There's nothing audiences love more than that. See how everyone adores Paris Hilton!"
Society
Forward to 1784, and Jeanne (played as a grown-up by Hilary Swank) is at Versailles. She wants to get back in the toff club, but its bouncer (Minister of Titles, the film calls him) is having none of it. "Your father was prone to stirring up parliament," he says. "He spoke out against poverty and tyranny!" she howls. No, he didn't: he went around moaning about how he should have loads of free cash because he was the illegitimate descendant of a king. As does she, throughout the film. Furthermore, her father's Valois descent was legally recognised, though her husband's title – Comte de La Motte – was made up.
Fashion
Jeanne's only hope is to get in with Marie-Antoinette (Joely Richardson), but the queen is too busy staggering around with cages of live birds wedged in her pouf. A "pouf", of course, was the contemporary name for her elaborate coiffure. Marie-Antoinette inspired poufs all over Europe. The most sought-after poufs were up to three feet tall and adorned with flowers, feathers, jewels and model warships. Live birds are the stuff of legend - you couldn't have something crapping on your pouf in the middle of a party. Though, according to popular pamphlets, weirder things did happen at Versailles.
Scandal
Enter scheming Cardinal de Rohan (Jonathan Pryce) and his seedy buddy Count Cagliostro (Christopher Walken), the latter inexplicably dressed as Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula. They smoke unidentified substances and lounge around in heaps of semi-naked women. One scene is contrived so that Rohan really does get to rip a bodice, though regrettably it's not played for laughs. Jeanne blackmails Cagliostro by threatening to expose him as a fraud which, seeing as he was probably the most notorious fraud in Europe at the time, would hardly have set him quaking behind his comedy adhesive moustache. Then she flatters Rohan into believing that the queen thinks he's hot. She seals the deal by hiring a Marie-Antoinette impersonator to flirt with him at night in the Grove of Venus at Versailles. Improbable as this seems, it's actually true. Soon, the big wally hands over the Slave's Collar, and Jeanne is in the money.
Justice
Jeanne and Rohan are subjected to a trial, peppered here with silly moments like her fictional speech in her own defence: "When a ray of hope came into view, I reached for it with all my might." Her lies convinced no one except, perhaps, the makers of this film that all she had done was mightily reach for a ray of hope, but her salacious memoirs prove that she could write better than they.
Verdict
Though Jeanne is heavily fictionalised, The Affair of the Necklace doesn't mess up the surrounding facts too badly. The real mystery is how they've managed to make one of history's wildest scandals so dull.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009