Review "The King's Gardens" (A Little Chaos)

Release date: April 24th, 2015 (June 18th, 2015 in The Netherlands)
Language: English
Director: Alan Rickman
Stars: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alan Rickman and Stanley Tucci
IMDB rating: 6,3
Rating:  (5 / 5)

Wednesday, May 27th, The Hague: the premiere of “The King’s Gardens”, in the company of Alan Rickman himself. Pathé Buitenhof organized an amazing event and we were there… Michelle and I dressed up all pretty and took the train to the cinema. There was a big red carpet and we were glad to get of the uneven paving since that really doesn’t make it easy to walk on in high heels. We couldn’t really get close to Alan Rickman, as he was doing some interviews, but we saw him, clearly. He’s not very tall, though. Still, he was everything you see on TV and more. This guys is a legend, I think. Not a ‘legend’ legend, but a legend nonetheless.

Pictures taken from movienewz.nl

Pictures taken from movienewz.nl

After the red carpet there we walked inside and got handed over a lovely glass of prosecco. As soon as everyone was seated down Rene Mioch introduced Alan Rickman. He started with asking Alan some question and then gave other people some time to ask question. After that it was time to watch the movie and I have to admit it exceeded our expectations.

A romantic drama following Sabine, a talented landscape designer, who is building a garden at Versailles for King Louis XIV. Sabine struggles with class barriers as she becomes romantically entangled with the court’s renowned landscape artist. (IMDB)

So the movie follows Kate Winslet as Sabine who gets hired by André le Notre to help him with building a garden at Versailles. She lives all alone, with a maid it seems, and we gets hints about her husband and child not being with her anymore. Though this will be explained further on in the movie. Sabine and André fall in love even though André is married. However his marriage has been bad for a few years and his wife is cheating on him.

I have to admit that I’m a big fan of period drama’s but find the romantic plotlines sometimes a bit too cliché. This is not at all the case with this movie, in my opinion this romantic plotline was just perfect. Kate played the role of Sabine beautifully and you could really feel a chemistry between her and Matthias Schoenearts. Matthias seems to be up and coming actor because his role of Mr. Oak in Far From The Madding Crowd was just perfect. Alan Rickman portrayed the role of Louis XIV which was just hilarious to watch. Funny thing is that when we saw Stanley Tucci on the screen, off course known as Ceasar Flickerman in the Hunger Games trilogy, we just forgot his real name and kept calling him Ceasar. You just got to love Stanley Tucci and his the humorous role in this movie as a gay man at the court of Louis XIV.

As you might already noticed, I absolutely loved this movie. The acting was perfect and you could really sense a good chemistry between all the actors. The filming was also very good and it looks like Alan Rickman really knew what he was doing and how he wanted to tell this story. Off course the story is purely fictional, because a woman working in that time is not realistic at all but in the movie it all looks very realistic (the man didn’t really bother taking orders from a woman). So I think that everyone should see this movie! And I think that I have found myself a new favorite period drama next to Pride and Prejudice (2006).

In a nutshell:
Liked: Hell Yeah!
Loved it: Absolutely!
Re-watch: I would watch it everyday if I could!
Cinema worthy: Yes, definitely a movie you should see on the big screen.