When I saw this film listed in the 29th Annual Vancouver International Film Festival’s line-up, I wanted to see it. First it was a period piece and it was in French. I love films that has one or the other or both.

The story takes place between 1568 and 1571, during the French Wars of Religion, and focuses on a princess who has to marry a prince while being passionately in love with another man.

Basically, The Princess of Montpensier is about a young noblewoman torn between passion, duty, companionship and ambition, each quality personified by a different man, in Bertrand Tavernier’s compelling period drama.

For a full plot summary visit VIFF’s page for it

Melanie Thierry plays the title character and while you can see that her physical beauty would attract the bevy of men in the film, her personality was such a turn off. First off, Marie is supposed to be 16 years old, which might explain her immaturity but unfortunately, Thierry doesn’t even look close to 16.

Now, going into this I thought this would be a period romance, and from the trailers I thought it would be like in the vain of Lady Jane. When I saw that she was forced into marriage, I thought maybe she would fall in love with her kind and handsome husband, Phillippe de Montpensier (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet).

A movie where the heroine is torn from her true love, you would hope that you want her to reunite with him. In this case, the torn lover is Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel) but I could care less that they reunited or whatever. I really did want her to be with her husband,

And then there is Lambert Wilson, who plays the older François de Chabannes who is a friend of Phillipe and teaches Marie Latin and poetry and to write. Of course, the much older man would fall in love with her but I don’t see why he would be attracted to such a selfish woman. Plus, Wilson reminded me a lot of Jeremy Irons in terms of physical looks in this movie.

However, if you forget that Francois was in love with Marie, there was a beautiful friendship there and in that sense Wilson and Thierry had good chemistry.

Despite her beauty, I felt that Thierry had no chemistry with any of her admirers.

Another problem with this film is that I got no sense from director Tavernier the passage of time. The film was supposed to have taken place over three years. I would have no clue that years had passed until Marie mentioned being alone for two years. To me it felt like the movie took place over months than years.

Since this is a period piece, the costumes were lovely and scenes at the Royal Court of France lavish. It defintely was a very pretty movie to look at and not just the beautiful people in it.

The Princess of Montpensier is playing as part of the 29th annual Vancouver International Film Festival. Its next showing is Tue, Oct 5th 12:30pm at the Visa Screening Room @ Empire Granville Th7.