Splitting a film in half and splitting it into two parts is rarely successful, beyond commercial. Riding the strategy that was imposed on him Quentin Tarantino and managed to make himself known in Kill Bill, the French director Martin Bourbon hits the screens with The Three Musketeers: Milady just over six months after the first episode, dedicated to D’Artagnan, which can now be seen on Netflix.
This second half begins exactly where the first part left off, with the protagonist of this episode falling into the void, after a brief review of the events of the first film. The story of the plot to assassinate King Louis XIII is here a mere pretext to give free rein to the characters created by Alexandre Dumas.
The focus is on the elusive Milady de Winter, in the skin of a magnetic Eva Verdeand sparks fly with an astonished D’Artagnan played by Francesco Civile.
Few actresses could have embodied Milady’s ambiguity better than Green, a character Milla Jovovich had surpassed in the last version of The Three Musketeers directed by Paul WS Anderson just over ten years ago. Milady never seems to tire of seducing nobles and swordsmen to wear who knows what blade around their neck before slipping away, perhaps the card that Bourboulon plays most often here.
D’Artagnan is the first and last of them, but in some inexplicable way, at least within the confines of this second part, the swordsman ignores the spy’s charms to continue with his campaign to free Constance Bonacieux.
Perhaps the film’s big problem lies precisely in the filmmaker’s lack of interest in reconstructing the motivations of his characters, left out in the first chapter.
Or perhaps there lies the secret of a galloping narrative, in which Bourboulon takes all the shortcuts and detours from Dumas’s starting point (including a curious musketeer from equatorial Gascony) to give rhythm to a film that doesn’t even seem to have much time to dedicate to the trio that gives its name to the saga.
For the action scenes of “The Three Musketeers: Milady”, director Martin Bourboulon takes all the time in the world.Two narrative lines
The Three Musketeers travel to fight the Protestants of La Rochelle straddling the two secondary narrative lines that they manage to divide.
Vincenzo Cassel takes care of one of them by turning Athos into an emo musketeer with a dark revelation of a family dilemma. Porthos and Aramis suffer from a similar situation, but give it a clownish tone as the First Musketeer helps his companion find a husband for his pregnant sister.
The other star of the film, Louis Garrelhe also shines in a slapstick tone as a king who seems impossible to entertain.
Bourboulon’s strong point, as in the first chapter, lies in the visual design of each fight, which seems to go against the frenetic succession of cuts that reigns in contemporary cinema.
The director takes his time with every shot of each attack with sword in hand and even tries to hide the cuts that interrupt the choreography to give the duels a satisfying sense of unity.
“The Three Musketeers: Milady,” a new twist on the Alexandre Dumas classic. It would not be strange, given the results obtained by Bourboulon, for this double film to be transformed into a series of films (Athos could easily star in the next one) and even, as the French producer Dimitri Rassam announced before the release of the first, The Three musketeers can be Hollywood’s “answer to superhero mythology.”
No one would be surprised if France, Marvel-style, competed with them by building a universe orbiting Dumas’ creation.
File
The Three Musketeers: Milady
Qualification: Well
Adventure. France, 2023, 114′. SAM13. From: Martin Borboulon. With: Eva Green, François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Louis Garrel Rooms: Hoyts Abasto, Cinemark Palermo, Patio Bullrich, Multiplex Belgrano, Cinema Devoto
Source: Clarin
