Writer: Cinnamon Lion

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Watch this if you liked: "Atonement", "Jane Eyre" and "Elizabeth"

The Good, the Bad and English garden affair:

• Alan Rickman multitasks in this film as a director, co-writer and cast member, playing King Louis XIV.

• There is splendor and grand magnificence where the costumes and set designs are concerned, invoking a great sense of classic English style that may take away the breath of fans of great English classic like "Elizabeth", "Jane Eyre", "Atonement", "Emma" and more.

• Despite the top-tier cast like Kate Winslet, Stanley Tucci and Helen McCrory, the film often falls into a stasis like state where the plot is concerned, causing one to lose focus of the story.

• Winslet does stand out in her role as a middle-class female landscape designer hired to re-landscape the garden of royalty, so as expected the themes of sexism and feminism is explored here, but they are hardly touched upon and the impact of its message is just too subtle to be of any significance.


Cinema Online, 20 July 2015