The Marquise of Darkness (2010 TV Movie) User Reviews

Sorting the problem out within the family.

[dbdumonteil · 26 February 2011]

Anne -La Femme Nikita- Parillaud may be a curious choice to portray the Marquise De Brinvilliers but the MTV work was Alain Delon's ex-protégée 's idea and she managed quite well.The criminal who is responsible for several deaths in her own family is shown as a victim of a macho world (her father and her brothers ).And the brains behind her crimes may rather be Le Chevalier De Sainte Croix and the father was probably right when he said that he was his daughter's evil genius and had him imprisoned .The problem is that the movie is too short and it would have taken at least three episodes to tell the story efficiently(the trial ,notably).After her death,some people considered her a saint ,which is often the case with poisoners.

Like this? Try this.....

"L'Affaire Des Poisons" ,Henry Decoin (1955) about another poisoner "La Voisin" .

the life and times of a French Ancien Régime poisoner

[myriamlenys · 7/10 · 24 July 2020]

A married noblewoman conspires with her lover in order to murder her estranged father. Pretending a return to filial affection and playing the dutiful nurse, she laces her father's food with liberal amounts of poison. The man does indeed die, after a long and painful agony. Pursued by debtors, addicted to gambling and angry at most of her relatives, the noblewoman is not about to stop...

The movie is based on a book (which, sadly, I've never read) about the real-life crimes of Marie-Madeleine Dreux d'Aubray, marquise de Brinvilliers. It's a carefully made movie with good performances ; as far as I can tell, it seems to stick closely to historical reality. The costumes and sets are well-done and evocative. The viewer also gets an interesting lead character, who, in the course of a single week, can move from hideous crime to true Christian piety, to religious hysteria and/or to cunning hypocrisy. "Complicated" is the word...

Yet somehow or other the movie did not fully please me ; it felt somewhat too sober and distant for its subject. Perhaps it also felt too sane...

I've got to say that I was more impressed with another work inspired by the same noblewoman's crimes, to wit "Les condiments irréguliers". You might want to take a look at "Les condiments", I found it quite good. (Wrote a small review there too.)