Stometer
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
the_wolf_imdb
There is probably some philosophy about education, freedom, order, God, values etc etc somewhere deep in this movie. The problem is the movie is way too long, too incoherent, explains too little about the motivation of the founder (the queen) and all the other persons here. I have no idea who is who in this movie - maybe some of these girls have been really important for the French history or whatever. Something is happening in here, but the movie is very slow, hard to watch, boring to death. "Barry Lyndon" was not the fastest historical movie I have seen but I loved it. The story was coherent and real, I could see fate of a real man in particular historical era. But this movie is more or less the collection of postcards, emotions, images than real storytelling movie. I have had very hard time to fit the movie to some particular time or greater historical picture. There is no real ending, no explanation of consequences. I have found this movie way too unsatisfactory to enjoy it. The "Vatel" was way, way better.
writers_reign
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.
marlenechen
A bit difficult to understand, it takes much time, not only once to watch the film. Fine points of french history and language are not visible (and not particularly interesting) for me, because this film is about the relations between humans, human and God, human and its conscience. From this direction the film is terrifically impressive and deep… Also if you like films a sort of "The Fine art of love: mine ha-ha": extremely romantic, but with such dramatic end, that you weep bitter tears after the last shot then it's definitely for you. P.S. I'm so sorry for my terrible English.
jean-no
It's a pity I have to write in english here, I have the words in my own language but maybe not in shakespeare's. The movie tells about how Mme de Maintenon (last wife of king Louis the fourteenth) has created a young girls institution called Saint-Cyr. It is actually an excellent subject to understand the philosophical and religious questions of the Baroque, but for this time, well, it's just a not very good yet well intentioned film. Isabelle Huppert does her part all right (it's not her best acting anyways), Jean-Pierre Kalfon is a possible king Louis, but that is all, the rest of the cast is not professional enough to hold a bad script. Often in the film, writings tells us "5 years later", "one month later", "one summer day", and that is good, we'll understand nothing without them. It's a pity there is not more of that to tell us also who's who, what means what, what place is what, why a people going out of a room closes the door in front of him (in my world he can't get out then), why the horses rides are circular, why why why... The language used is not well chosen : it's sure not the languages of the times, not our times eigther, it is too much "written" but not well written. A funny idea was to show the little girls coming from the whole country using their local language (the 'patois'), the uniformization of the french language was one of the great chalenges of the 17th. The characters are not good, much too romantic, I'm not very happy to have spent one and a half hour watching this. The public will keep in mind some historical points, maybe, but it's not more intersting and less fun than "angélique marquise des anges". Historical movies like "tous les matins du monde" are much more intersting, they try (and fail or not, how to say ?) to catch the exact spirit of the ages. a 6/10 because I love very much Isabelle Huppert.
