One Nation, One King

The sheer complexity of the French Revolution has made it a difficult topic for film-makers, and Pierre Schoeller fails in his noble bid to make it accessible by emphasising the role le peuple played in the fall of a royal dynasty. The sequences set at court and in the various assemblies formed after 14 July 1789 have a ring of solemn authenticity that is sadly lacking from the melodramatic (and sometimes musical) passages involving glass-blower Olivier Gourmet, laundress Adèle Haenel and chicken thief Gaspard Ulliel, who conveniently keep showing up at the most epochal moments in Louis XVI's decline and fall. Typical of Schoeller's populist pandering is the episode in which the residents of a benighted street experience sunlight for the first time in centuries, as the Bastille tower is demolished. But the National Convention vote on the king's fate sums up the textbook approach, as each speaker is identified by captions that fail to denote their historical significance.