Le Déluge: Guillaume Canet and Mélanie Laurent as Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette - our opinion

Le Déluge, a new film directed by Gianluca Jodice, stars Guillaume Canet and Mélanie Laurent as Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, during their imprisonment at the Conciergerie. Here, we discover the royal couple not in the luxury of Versailles, but awaiting their sentence.

Far from the excesses of the Court of Versailles, Gianluca Jodice 's new film Le Déluge presents Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in a historical drama at the height of the French Revolution. Played by Guillaume Canet and Mélanie Laurent, we witness the fall of the royal couple and the end of absolute monarchy.

Spectators are plunged into 1792, at the very end of the Ancien Régime. On August 13, 1792, at the height of the French Revolution, Marie-Antoinette, Louis XVI, his sister Madame Élisabeth (Aurore Brutin), his daughter Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte and his son Le Dauphin were taken to the Tour du Temple dungeon. The film is loosely based on the diaries of Cléry, the King's valet who remained with him until his death.

The film, in theaters December 25, 2024, features a three-star cast, including Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet. The latter, to ensure a physique resembling that of Louis XVI, was equipped not only with prostheses, but also a padded suit, a transformation that required no less than 4 hours' work every morning.

Gianluca Jodice'sLe Déluge, a Franco-Italian creation, is only the director's second film. It's a complex subject, little interpreted on screen, as viewers have often been accustomed to seeing depictions of the lives of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI at the Court of Versailles rather than at the Temple Prison.

After a failed escape to Austria in June 1791 (the famous Varennes flight), the royal family found themselves imprisoned in the Temple prison. Louis XVI was tried and guillotined in January 1793, and Marie-Antoinette, after being transferred to the Conciergerie, was guillotined in October 1793. The king's valet Cléry escaped the Terror by fleeing abroad after the king had been guillotined, and his work "Journal de ce qui s'est passé à la tour du Temple pendant la captivité de Louis XVI", on which Le Déluge is based, helped to reconstruct this moment in history.

Our opinion:

This part of the story of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI was interesting to explore, and we don't get yet another version of Marie-Antoinette 's life at court. We discover long, wide shots that are very pleasant to look at, transporting us to 1792. The soundtrack is intelligently set, underscoring the well-chosen settings of this dark period.

Guillaume Canet 's transformation is so impressive that we forget he was chosen to play Louis XVI. We have before us a vision of a mediocre but endearing man, brilliantly played by Guillaume Canet, with Marie-Antoinette at her wit's end, disappointed by her husband's inability to do anything.

While the story may deserve a few more twists and turns, it nonetheless tries to be in line with historical reality, and the viewer ends up waiting, like Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI, for the sentence. A successful drama from Gianluca Jodice, in which the suffering of the royal family grips our hearts from start to finish.

Le Déluge: Guillaume Canet and Mélanie Laurent as Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette - our opinion

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