The Affair of the Necklace

Plot synopsis:
Jeanne de Saint-Rémy de Valois, orphaned at an early age, is determined to reclaim her royal title and the home taken from her family when she was a child. When she is rebuffed by Marie Antoinette and fails to achieve her goal through legal channels, she joins forces with the arrogant, well-connected gigolo Rétaux de Villette and her own wayward, womanizing husband Nicholas. They concoct a plan to earn her enough money to purchase the property.
King Louis XV had commissioned Parisian jewellers Boehmer and Bassenge to create an opulent 2,800-carat (560 g), 647-diamond necklace to present to his mistress Madame du Barry, but the king died before it was completed. Hoping to recover the high cost of the necklace, its creators try to persuade Marie Antoinette to purchase it. Knowing its history, she declines.
Jeanne approaches debauched libertine Cardinal Louis de Rohan and introduces herself as a confidante of the Queen. For years the Cardinal has yearned to regain the Queen's favor and acquire the position of Prime Minister of France, and when he is reassured by occultist Count Cagliostro that Jeanne is legitimate, he allows himself to be seduced by her promise to intervene on his behalf. He begins to correspond with the Queen and is unaware that his letters to her are intercepted and the Queen's responses are forgeries intended to manipulate him. The tone of the letters become very intimate. The cardinal becomes more and more convinced that Marie Antoinette is in love with him, and he becomes ardently enamored of her.
Jeanne allegedly arranges a meeting between the two in the garden at the Palace of Versailles. Portraying the Queen is Nicole Leguay d'Oliva, an actress bearing some resemblance to her. Heavily cloaked, with her face in the shadows, she agrees to forget their past disagreements. The Cardinal believes his indiscretions have been forgiven and he once again is in the Queen's good favor.
Jeanne advises the Cardinal the Queen has decided to purchase the necklace but, not wanting to offend the populace by openly buying such an expensive item, she wishes him to do so on her behalf, with a promise to reimburse him for the cost by the Feast of the Assumption. The Cardinal gladly agrees and presents the necklace to Rétaux de Villette, believing him to be an emissary from the Queen. Nicholas de Lamotte sells some of the diamonds, and Jeanne uses the profits to buy her family home.
The Cardinal begins to panic when Jeanne disappears and his correspondence with the Queen comes to an abrupt end. His concern is put to rest by an invitation to visit the palace on the Feast of the Assumption, at which time he assumes he will be repaid in full and named Prime Minister. Instead, King Louis XVI, who has been made aware of his machinations by Minister Breteuil, has him imprisoned in the Bastille. Soon to follow are everyone else involved in the plot. A trial finds the Cardinal, Count Cagliostro, and Nicole Leguay d'Oliva innocent of all charges. Rétaux de Villette is found guilty and banished from France. Jeanne is found guilty and whipped and branded before being imprisoned; she later escapes to London where she publishes her memoirs and regales the locals with her tales. Eventually Marie Antoinette, assumed to be a key player in the affair by an increasingly angry and restless populace, meets her fate on the guillotine. We learn via an epilogue Jeanne died after falling from her hotel room window and was rumored to have been killed by royalists.

Tags: intrigue, flashback

Review:
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.
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).
Don't get me wrong, I do like Hillary and have recently praised her depiction of the young cop in "Insomnia", but in "The Affair" she was like a fish out of water, too angular, too wooden and quite obviously a modern American actress faking an English accent depicting a French character.Then we must blame the director, because the sense of tension in this film was minimal.
Hilary Swank plays a young woman in a marriage of convenience to Adrien Brody's character, who feels her ancestral lands and family name were unjustly seized and taken from her by the French crown.
However, he does play "The Compte" and Surreyhill's Second Corollary of bodice-ripping clearly states that any male character under 45 who has the title of "Compte de ________" is to be considered sexy, whether villainous or heroic, as Comptes are by definition, sexy.This Compte mutters his lines in a weird "method" hybrid of Brando and Queens, while the rest of the cast is assuming an English accent, which causes cognitive dissonance, since the movie is set in France and stars mostly Americans.Brody certainly does his best to kick some life into the plot, and he and Walken seem to be the only cast members who seem to have copped to the notion that they AREN'T in a serious, art-house type film which will accrue numerous Oscar nods, but that they are instead in the cheesiest of cheesy historical bodice-rippers and may as well have a bit of fun with it.
Apparently, there is some sort of rule in this movie that all fights must be Shirts/Skins, and in the case of the first duel, Simon Baker is shirtless while Brody is dressed to thrill.But unfortunately for those of us who would prefer an extended shirts/skins dueling sequence, the plot grinds on and the necklace is put into play, and the Compte ends up being chased through the streets of Paris by a flatfooted officer of the guard.
It's a good film with a good story but not one that will make any critics' lists.The story of The Affair of the Necklace is extremely complex involving a countess, the Cardinal of France, the Queen of France, a gigolo, a sorcerer/psychic, a couple of jewelers, a peasant actress, forged letters, and a necklace of tremendous value and prestige.
From the start, we know who did it, and the story back-tracks to tell us how and why the intrigue was perpetrated.Now the not-so-good news: Hillary Swank, a 2-time academy-award-winning actress, is miscast for the part.
This storylike true story had already been filmed by Marcel Lherbier in 1946,with Vivianne Romance -famous for her bitchy parts-,a more than adequate comtesse de la Motte.This is the first mistake of this "remake":Hilary Swank portrays a genuine heroine,whose properties have been stolen by an unfair monarchy,whose father was some kind of Robin Hood who protected the poor against the cruelty of times.She appears most of the time as a victim,a noble adventuress,with a romantic love affair with her sidekick,but it's the ending in London that takes the biscuit,when she reads her memoirs to old posh sobbing ladies "oh poor thing!oh poor dear!" Les "memoires de madame de la Motte" -which were published in France during the revolution are obnoxious,trash stuff..Historian Jean Chalon quotes this line in that notorious book "the voluptuous princess -she's speaking of Marie-Antoinette- was waiting for me in her bed ,and I must say she took advantage of her husband's absence..."Actually Marie-Antoinette never met madame de la Motte and the scene under the snow when the queen accuses la comtesse of ruining the monarchy is pure fiction.The scenarists are as naive as the cardinal de Rohan,and as the people of Paris in 1786,who thought Madame de la Motte's punishment was unfair.La Motte wouldn't stay long in la Salpetriere anyway,and some say she was helped to escape.As for cardinal de Rohan ,he was far from being a saint,but he was naiveté itself.how could he believe that Marie Antoinette ,who had always despised her and never spoke to him,could use him as an emissary?The film is entertaining and a lot of scenes are more historically accurate -such as the grove of Venus and the trial:that's was the queen's mistake:the king did not need the parlament to judge somebody-.
Walken is ideally cast as comte de Cagliostro ,as Brody as Nicolas de la Motte.But the Queen's execution (1793) comes at the most awkward moment ,and La Motte was dead (in 1791) when it occurred anyway.The scenarists suggest her death might have been a crime :never an earnest French historian made a hint at that.At the time,the royal family had more important problems to solve .The scenarists say that the affair of the necklace was the direct cause for the French revolution,which is a narrow-minded view.It might have been the straw that broke the camel's back but the reasons were much more complex and the students should take a better look at it.The movie does not tell that after his exile,Rohan was restored to favor during the revolution ,became part of the Etats-Généraux" in 1789 ,and died in Germany in 1803,the last of the dramatis personae.
Story is about a woman named Jeanne St. Remy de Valois (Hilary Swank) whose parents were killed as traitors to the French regime and now as an adult will do anything to get her family name and household back.
She decides along with her lover Retaux de Vilette (Simon Baker) and the man she had married for convenience Nicolas De La Motte (Adrien Brody) would scheme a plan to convince the Cardinal Louis de Rohan (Jonathan Pryce) to purchase a very expensive necklace and give it to Marie-Antoinette (Joely Richardson).
I compare "The Affair of the Necklace" to this fancified little cake because like petit fours, the film looks great but once you sink your teeth into it, it is quite unappealing.
Looks good--but that is all is how I see this film."The Affair of the Necklace" is a costume drama set in the latter period of the reign of Louis XVI of France.
The film makes the worst mistake possible with a historical drama: it tries to teach a history lesson, rather than letting a great story unfold from terrific characters who just happen to be real.
Hilary Swank, Adrien Brody and Christopher Walken all lent their considerable talents to this somewhat confusing tale of lies, deceit, sex, murder, and a gaudy necklace that would have made Zsa Zsa Gabor consider poverty as an alternative.I watched it all and I understood what was going on, I think, but it didn't make me care enough to actually pay attention.
For one thing, it makes Marie Antoinette look like an idiot.Jonathan Pryce, Simon Baker and Brian Cox add their considerable talents to this strange movie.I did laugh a couple of times, such as when Brody gets shot in this rear, and when the doctor is removing the bullet, Adrien asks "are you digging for potatoes"?
For someone without a nitpicky, in-depth knowledge of the era, I thought the 'court' costumes were stunning, and the 'love scene' was made all the more interesting because of the layers of clothes Hilary Swank had to get through!I wasn't aware of the details of 'true story' beforehand, and so I didn't have any cause to object to the 'Hollywood interpretation', nor would I now.
I know that an American film has every right to select an American actress, but if such a choice is perfectly fitting, then why was Hilary Swank desperately trying to clip her natural speech into a forced British accent?
With the light-weight Simon Baker, I just kept wondering which Australian soap I recognised him from (Heartbreak High).There were a number of fade outs towards the end of the film where I thought the credits should have rolled - I agree with a previous review, in that there really wasn't enough story to sustain nearly two hours of film - but, in the style of Spielberg's 'A.I.', the bulk of the running time was easy enough to watch.A superficially well-dressed dramatisation..
The story was engaging, the cinematography was beautiful, and the acting was top-notch (with the slight exception of Miss Swank who was a little stiff for two-thirds of the movie).
"satisfied" in the sense that the director is not familiar with directing historical films, but is still able to portray believable and beautiful scenes, "quite" in the sense that the cast is not acting as well as I've expected.
Woefully miscast and horribly staged, The Affair of the Necklace is the RARE historical, costume drama that I found myself greatly disliking.Necklace is based upon the true-ish story (some liberties were naturally taken with this) of Jeanne de la Motte Valois (Hilary Swank - Boys Don't Cry, Million Dollar Baby, Amelia) -- a French countess who's title had been stripped from her family by the crown in the late 18th Century (just PRE-Revolution).
In hopes of regaining her royal title(s), Jeanne and a trio of men -- her lover (Simon Baker -- The Devil Wears Prada, LA Confidential), her husband (Adrien Brody -- The Pianist, King Kong) and an Italian count (Christopher Walken -- Catch Me If You Can, The Deer Hunter) -- conspire to obtain a priceless necklace that also "catches the eye" of the royal Marie-Antoinette (Joely Richardson - 101 Dalmatians, The Patriot, the "Americanized" Girl with a Dragon Tattoo).
It is the queen's pursuit of THIS very necklace that ultimately leads to her very own rapid downfall -- I said there were some liberties/stretches here -- and the destruction of the French aristocracy.As Jeanne isn't a sympathetic character (we can blame some of this on bad writing), The Affair of the Necklace is neither engrossing nor engaging.
Even with three Oscar-winning actors in the cast (Brody, Swank and Walken), I cannot recommend this.If I HAD to watch The Affair of the Necklace all over again, I might begin wishing for the same fate that befell that French queen.
Hilary Swank, as always, plays her character incredibly well.What I liked most about the movie (besides the intriguing plot, humor, action and mystery..
There was no pretense that people back then were more proper than they are today; they had the same desires, used what they had, and made the same mistakes, just in a different setting.Fans of Christopher Walken will be pleased to know that he has as unique a role as always, adding his special charm to the film where needed.There are also some great outtakes on the special features, which is also unusual but very refreshing for a period drama.I hope you rent it and enjoy it as much as I did!.
`The Affair of the Necklace' plays on that metaphor as it chronicles the attempt of 18th century Jeanne Valois  (Hilary Swank) to reclaim the estate and good name of her family after its seizure by the pre-revolution French crown.
Walken has more fun than anyone else in film history parodying himself.Hilary Swank should never again be allowed to speak stilted Beaumarchais as if it were an SNL skit, and writer John Sweet should be flogged for dialogue such as this: "The wound in my ass is barking like a pack of hounds." Or:"S**t will rain on us in biblical amounts.
I am not interested in becoming its catch basin."Surely warning should be given to fine actors like Jonathan Pryce and Brian Cox that unless they play their roles for laughs, they will risk their audience's suspicion that the actors believe the film is a legitimate work of art.Director Charles Shyer should go back to `Smokey and the Bandit,' Swank to `Boys Don't Cry,' and Christopher Walken to  `America's Sweethearts.' We all should go to `The Royal Tenenbaum's' for amusing and artful court intrigue..
Certainly the true story of "The Affair of the Necklace" is one of the most fascinating in all history, and despite a lot of problems, this 2001 film, deriving its name from said affair, is interesting if misguided.
As Cardinal Rohan, however, Jonathan Pryce is very good, as are some of the performances in the smaller roles.There are lots of complaints on this board about the accents, which goes to show you that this film failed on a few levels - people would probably not be mentioning accents if they'd really loved this movie.
Maybe there could have been more uniformity, but you can say that about any WWII propaganda film, where Hollywood hired actual foreigners to work among the Americans.I actually found the movie intriguing, as it's a great story, even if it wasn't told particularly well.
As in the film, Marie did wind up in England and write her memoirs, but they were filled with stories of a lesbian relationship between her and Marie Antoinette.In portraying Jeanne as somehow sympathetic - denied her place in society, as well as her home and her name, and watching her father (who was in reality a drunk) killed by soldiers - a lot of the teeth is taken out of the story.
Adrien Brody is always magnificent--here in a small role as the errant husband of Hilary Swank.You can get totally wrapped up in beautiful scenery (filmed in Prague and France), the intricate plot, the fine performances, the unspooling of history.
I loved the way the story traced the politics of court life.Some of the top actors of our time managed to put their best work into this film.
for costumes, for the admirable work of Adrien Brody and Jonathan Pryce, for the effort of Hillary Swank to be credible in a role who is not real comfortable for her, for a lovely Marie Antoinette by Joely Richardson, for the decent way for present a legend in attractive manner.
In 1784, Jeanne (Hilary Swank) sets off to plead her family's case to Queen Marie Antoinette (Joely Richardson).
Furthermore, the cast was also a must see Hilary Swank, Joely Richardson, Bryan Cox, Christopher Walken, Simon Baker and Adrian Brody.
Not only does Hilary Swank excel in her first big-budget sophmore attempt after the breakthrough we saw with Boys Don't Cry, but "The Affair of the Necklace" is the first top-notch, well-conceived and highly effective costume epic that's been produced since Scorsese's "Age of Innocence."  The only thing I might take issue with is the accent-non-realism- yet one is even willing to forget that the actors seem to all have British accents, somewhat inconsistent with how the film takes place in Revolutionary France, because of the luminous cinematography and the concise, gorgeous dialogue-acting.
If you like costume dramas and you're looking for some escapist entertainment, "The Affair of the Necklace" is a good pick..
"The Affair of the Necklace" is an interesting attempt to explain the "Diamond Necklace Scandal" that brought about the French Revolution and the downfall of the French monarchy in the late 18th century.Conspirators, who want to turn public opinion against Queen Marie Antoinette,convince jewelers to design an especially beautiful necklace to gain the queen's favor.
THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE Aspect ratio: 2.39:1Sound formats: Dolby Digital / DTS / SDDS1780's France: Whilst attempting to reclaim her family estate - stolen by an indifferent Marie Antoinette (Joely Richardson) - a spirited young noblewoman (Hilary Swank) sets in motion a sequence of events that will help precipitate the French Revolution.Violence and intrigue amongst the aristocrats of 18th century Europe, just before the guillotine curbed its worst excesses.
It is the story of Countess Jeanne St. Remy Valois, played by Hilary Swank in her first role after winning an Oscar for *Boys Don't Cry*.
If the writer had spent more time building characters and transforming this true story in an engaging and convincing plot, Jeanne de Valois's drama would have been much more addictive.
I feel the director was so dazzled by the court dresses, wigs and goldsmiths that he forgot to really demand more from his staff.Hillary Swank does everything she can to save the movie and her character, and I was assured that her talent helped a lot to improve the film.
Hilary Swank stars as the 18th century French countess who, having been stripped by the crown, schemes her revenge by obtaining a necklace worth millions.The only reason I watched this film was because I'm a fan of Swank.
Christopher Walken is another favorite of mine, but his work here, I felt was overpowered by Swank's rather lacking performance, and I really never DID care for Adrien Brody.I'm not an expert of the time, and I know this film is based on factual events, the only part of this particular time in history is Marie Antoinette's part in it..."Let them eat cake." So, hence, I really don't feel right on commenting on the events, themselves.
For whatever reason, the director decided everyone (including the American actors) should have British accents, even though all the characters are French and the film takes place in pre-revolution France!
****THERE MIGHT BE A SPOILER IN HERE!!****The Affair of the Necklace is well, basically, worth watching, and Hilary Swank, Oscar winner, is stunning in her portrayal as the main character.