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The Ladies’ Way: Representations of Early Modern Women in Two Recent French Films

La Princesse de Montpensier and The King’s Way are both based on historical fiction written by women: the former on the eponymous novella by Mme de Lafayette and the latter on a memoir-novel by Françoise Chandernagor. Both films are well acted and display superb production values — beautiful settings, costumes, and historical color in the grand French manner. However, only The King’s Way — directed by a woman — succeeds in portraying a well-developed female character, free from gender stereotypes and historical clichés. I will review the films in sequence of their historical settings rather than in the order of production. La Princesse de Montpensier (134 mins.) takes place in the middle of the brutal Wars of Religion that wracked France in the late sixteenth century. The director, Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight, Sunday in the Country), deliberately set out to “modernize” what he saw as an anachronistic, moralizing tale. The film adopts the main lines of the novella plot, without achieving Lafayette’s perfect clarity of narration or psychological analysis. Marie de Mezières (played by the beautiful Mélanie Thierry) is in love with her childhood friend, the duc de Guise (Gaspard Uliel), and betrothed to his younger brother. Under pressure from the Bourbon family, her father orders her to marry the young prince de Montpensier (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). The prince is portrayed as an insecure young man, whose mumbling and social awkwardness stand in sharp contrast