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Storyline
Paris, 1786: a woman in court. The Crown murdered her father for his views about the poor, now Jeanne wants her home and good name back. She believes all can be set right if she can talk to the Queen, whose House Minister rebuffs her. With the help of a courtside gigolo, she learns to use what others desire to get what she wants. She needs a patron: with forged letters, she convinces Cardinal de Rohan she is the Queen's confidante and can help him regain royal favor. Jeanne conspires to have the Cardinal purchase a fabulous diamond necklace for the Queen. He delivers it to Jeanne for Marie Antoinette. If the scheme breaks down, what then? Might this affair spark revolution?
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Taglines:
This summer, one woman wins.....
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Details
Release Date:
7 December 2001 (USA)
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Box Office
Budget:
$30,000,000
(estimated)
Opening Weekend USA:
$125,523,
2 December 2001, Limited Release
Gross USA:
$430,313, 13 January 2002
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Technical Specs
Color:
Color
(Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1
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Did You Know?
Trivia
The mansion shown belonging to the Cardinal Louis de Rohan is actually the Chateau de Vaux-Le-Vicomte, built between 1658 and 1661 for Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis de Belle Île, Viscount of Melun and Vaux, the superintendent of finances to Louis XIV. To ensure there was enough room for the Chateau and the planned gardens, three villages were bought and demolished. Fouquet was unfortunetly not able to enjoy the property for very long. In August of 1661, a few days after a ball, to which Lous XIV was invited, to celebrate the completion of the Chateau, the King had Fouquet arrested, charged with misappropriation of public funds, to pay for the lavish estate's construction. Fouquet was imprisoned for life, and his wife exiled. The King bought or confiscated many of the furnishings and works of art on the property, and hired the team responsible for its construction to design and build the Palace of Versailles. The property was returned to Madame Fouquet in the mid 1670s. The Chateau was never the property of the Cardinal, nor did he ever live there. In 1705, shortly after the death of her husband and son, Madame Fouquet sold the Chateau to the Marshall Villars, one of Louis XIV's most trusted Generals. He bought it sight unseen. His son would sell the property to the Duke de Praslin in 1764, and his descendants kept the property for over one hundred years. It was eventually bought, in a sad state of disrepairs, and with the gardens overgrown, and uncared for, by the Sommier family, who restored the gardens and the Chateau. The Sommier still own Vaux-le-Vicomte, and the Chateau is now open to the public. The Chateau has cropped up frequently in movies and television shows, most memorably as the home "rebuilt stone by stone in California" by the villain Drax in the James Bond film Moonraker (1979).
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Narrator:
Napoleon wrote that military blunders and domestic catastrophes fanned the flames of the French Revolution. But the cu-de-gras was a curious palace scandal involving woman of nobility denied, a member of the royal family, and the most magnificent string of jewels in all of Europe. This notorious intrigue came to be known as, L'affaire du Collier.
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Connections
Version of
The Queen's Necklace (1929)
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Soundtracks
Mirage
Written by
Bob Holroyd
Courtesy of FirstCom Music, Inc.
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Despite John Sweet's uneven script, this fact-based tale of intrigue and scams in Marie Antoinette's court is watchable thanks to sumptuous production values (Milena Canonero's gorgeous costume design garnered an Oscar nomination), scene-stealing performances by Christopher Walken and Adrien Brody (who even gets into some swordplay as the heroine's dissolute nobleman husband. Few people can make lechery and debauchery look as sexy and fun as Brody does here! :-), and good solid work from most of the rest of the cast. In this drastic change of pace from her Oscar-winning performance in BOYS DON'T CRY, Hilary Swank plays Jeanne St. Remy de Valois, who takes revenge on her father's death and her family's ruin by pulling a scam on Cardinal Jonathan Pryce involving an ornate diamond necklace designed for exiled Madame DuBarry and spurned by the Queen (Joely Richardson captures Marie Antoinette's self-absorbed naïveté while still managing to make me feel a little sorry for her, knowing she'd pay for her foolishness with her life). Swank's performance isn't bad, but it's not as assured as it should be, considering that Jeanne's plot turned out to be instrumental in spawning the French Revolution. Next to the rest of the sterling cast, which also includes Brian Cox and Simon Baker, Swank sometimes comes across as a little girl who's playing dress-up and feeling self-conscious about it. FTR, my fave line comes from Brody who, after being shot by Swank's lady-in-waiting during his swordfight with Baker, is having the bullet in his butt removed none-too-gently by a doctor: `Good God, are you digging for potatoes?!` :-)