With the obvious exception of yet another Masterclass in Acting from Isabelle Huppert there isn't too much to enjoy here, at least on the surface. Huppert plays a real character, Madame Maintenon, initially the mistress and then the wife of Louis the Fourteenth who took it into her head to found a school - the Saint Cyr of the titles - to 'improve' some 250 young girls selected from around one thousand applicants. One of the first tasks was to iron out provincial accents and aim for an Gallic equivalent of Received English and this is where the native French speakers have a bonus inasmuch as they can follow the progress from Regional to National accents whilst to those obliged to rely on subtitles the accents sound pretty much the same. There's other stuff going on here, not least the secular/religion conflict but it tends to be obtuse and there are too many 'five years later' captions and not enough straightforward storytelling. Huppert fans will like it anyway but the rest may find it hard going.
Review of Saint-Cyr
