The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
(M. 121 minutes)
4 stars
Were you one of the handful of people that saw the travesty that was the American remake of Kath & Kim, with Selma Blair as Kim and Molly Shannon as Kath - saw what an appalling and unfunny mess it was, saw that it missed the point entirely?
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I did, those were my feelings too, and I was thinking back on it as I watched this latest film version of the classic 1844 Alexandre Dumas novel. I imagined how hurt the French national pride must have been every time an American or English production of it came to the screen.
I was thinking particularly of the 1993 American film with Chris O'Donnell as D'Artagnan and the trio of Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen and Oliver Platt as the Musketeers, and what a cultural travesty that production must have felt like to the French.
Martin Bourboulon restores Gallic pride with this exceptional production, which splits the book into two parts with this Part One: D'Artagnan releasing this week and Part Two: Milady hitting theatres on June 6.
It is 17th-century France and rural wannabe swordsman D'Artagnan (Francois Civil) is on the road to Paris where it is his ambition to join the prestigious Musketeers of the King's Guard.
D'Artagnan's journey is nearly over before it begins when he is shot while intervening in an apparent kidnapping of a wealthy woman. But his lucky escape brings him to Paris and an unfortunate introduction to his heroes.
The young countrysider manages to individually offend the three top-ranking Musketeers, Athos (Vincent Cassel), Porthos (Pio Marmai) and Aramis (Romain Duris), but fate sees him join their side in a fight that has him fast-tracked by King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel) into the company of the Musketeers.
Good timing too, because enemies of the King have planted a dead body in Athos's bed and have him imprisoned for murder. D'Artagnan and the remaining Musketeers are left to sleuth out who is behind the series of conspiracies to upset the royal rule, and what it all has to do with the mysterious Milady de Winter (Eva Green) and the Queen's consort Constance (Lyna Khoudri). And quite aside from the Catholic v Protestant upset amongst the people and the palace, there's the King's unfaithful wife Anne of Austria (Vicky Krieps) sneaking around at every opportunity with the indiscreet Duke of Buckingham (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd).
Bourboulon goes for fidelity, not in terms of a strict and chronological adaptation, but to the spirit of the times. He achieves this by assembling a King's Guard of his own, with some of France's most talented costumers, set builders and art design folk. The performers look like they smell like horse faeces and mud, so authentic is the film's grime on Paris's poorly sewered streets and so boggy are the countryside roads.
Nicolas Boldus's widescreen camera takes in so much of this excellent craftsmanship, and I especially appreciated Bourboulon's occasional choice to have the camera focus in on a single person or a single element of the set detail while we know an elaborate fight is going on in the background.
The Musketeers would have been the social media influencers of their day, so much discussed among the common folk that of course a young man from the countryside would have trained for years hoping to join them.
The casting is inspired, especially when it comes to the Musketeers. Most especially Cassel and Duris are wonderful casting. Both have had long careers as charming leading men, are much discussed and written about and photographed in their real lives, and they bring that mystique with them.
