Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

You may have heard of the Huguenots, but until you've seen "La reine Margot" ("Queen Margot" in English), you have no idea just how horrifying the massacre was. The marrying-off of Margaret of Valois and her subsequent affair with a soldier are but a backdrop for the sheer terror that overran France in the battle between Catholics and Protestants. At the time, it was a big deal to be a Protestant; there would soon be places would it was a big deal to be a Catholic. People sure are good at killing each other over petty issues.The bulk of the credit should go to Isabelle Adjani as Margot. She got thrust into this world of intrigue and deceit against her will and just wanted to live her life. I think that an equal amount of credit should go to Virna Lisi as Catherine of Medici; she shows Catherine to be a cold, ruthless individual. And of course the men play some good roles. Appearing in early roles are Asia Argento (co-star of "xXx" and daughter of horror director Dario Argento) and Thomas Kretschmann (co-star of "The Pianist" and "King Kong").A good movie, but mind you, it's one of the more intense movies that you'll ever watch. Practically every scene contains something violent. Make sure that you can tolerate this before turning it on.

An interesting and original attempt to reconstruct 16th century French court society. The atmosphere is grimy, violent and claustrophobic, with repeated outbursts of extravagantly expressed, uncontrolled emotion. The power structure of feudal society is clearly shown as distinctly different from today's, being more of a network of explicitly violent threats than an ideological legal framework, a theory which was also expressed quite well in the first of the recent Elizabeth films (the second one is excremental). If our rulers today were expected to prove their prowess by fighting large fierce mammals, politics would look rather different.The film portrays an extremely important episode in French and European history, a major step towards the establishment of Absolutism which then led to its own downfall in the Revolution. However the major political developments are left in the background. I was barely able to sketch them in with my own vague knowledge of the time, so this film might be a bit difficult to understand with no background knowledge at all. Hopefully this will stimulate viewers to find out more! There is prominent sexual content in this film. In my opinion it was neither excessive nor gratuitous. Sexuality was an important part of feudal court politics, and the emotional content of all the sex scenes forms an integral part of the portrayal of the characters' complex and conflicting motivations.There is also explicit violence. Again, this is integral to the development of the plot, characters and atmosphere. Perpetrators of the massacre are shown to be traumatised by what they have done and seen.This is an ambitious film, skilfully made, whose greatest strength is a vivid expression of an interesting theory about the nature of society in the time in which it is set.

....that I bought the new 2-disc remastered restored DIRECTORS CUT from Amazon.fr. -speaking nor able to read any French. Already having the English subtitled but excellently transfered 16:9 138 min NTSC version from Korea, I knew the gist of the story, and a few French words stood out. The film is a masterwork and left me stunned.Isabelle Adjani-should have been given the honor of a seat next to the throne of God himself, for her utterly stunning performance-where she gives her all-screw the Oscars -they know nothing. And Daniel Auteuel has become a favorite of mine-and gave an excellent performance, too.Pity his lover, the young Baroness, played by a lovely Asia Argento, as she meets a horrible fate. (Is there a poison that could act THAT quickly?-the idea was, I suppose, that 'French kissing' would spread the poison between the two, but a very quick cut shows her licking her fingers after she applied the Lip gloss, just before Margot breaks in)And the mysterious confidante of Margot, Henriette was a bit of an enigma.Will MIRAMAX ever get wise and do the 160 min version 16:9?There were still 10 mins of cut scenes, on disc 2, which are on par quality-wise with the film itself, which in America are usually sabotaged in some way, in the studios paranoid fear of some one getting any ideas about reconstructing a film on DVD-Interesting-On all the made in French DVDs I have-they use an attractive, tasteful way to put the WARNING DO NOT COPY at the start-it is artfully inserted, low key, in keeping with the film story, using font and pictures from the film-as the warnings travel horizontally past- EDV 117So watching their "FBI" warnings are almost a pleasure of short, SHORT film-making in and of itself.

I am at a loss to explain the high rating of this film.For such a long film there is surprisingly little character development or contextual information, so that much of the characters' behaviour appears ridiculous and the significance of the people and events is lost. The film jumps from event to event, via periods of gratuitous gore and nudity, without any real flow. Too much is crammed into too little time, probably also for the even longer original cut. The performances are fine (considering what they have to work with) and it does look fantastic but that's about it. I can overlook taking liberties with history but not terrible film-making. French melodrama of the very worst kind!