Watch Free The Princess of Montpensier Movie Online

Online, March 28, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Thank goodness we don't live in the 1560s in France, when people were killing each other over religion, and women were treated like second-class citizens at best and property at worst, and old men married young girls, and a tiny handful of people had most of the wealth and power in the land ... oh, wait. Well, at least our plumbing is better.

But other than that, nothing has changed much, human nature being what it is. For Marie de Mezières, forced to marry a stranger, the politically-powerful Prince de Montpensier, meant that she couldn't marry her cousin the Duke de Guise, even though they were in love. Or at least in lust, though as she had to remain a virgin until marriage, they didn't get any farther than some heavy breathing and a stolen kiss. Proving her virginity by a bloody sheet on her wedding night - said proof removed instantly by one of the half-dozen people in the room supervising, and shown to the respective fathers who sealed the deal with a handshake - still left her in a marriage to a young man who suspected she was still in love with her cousin, but who was called away to the war the next day, leaving that issue unresolved between them.

The war is in the background of all of this: the French Wars of Religion, a 30-year conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants, called Huguenots. Catherine de Medicis is on the throne as regent, and the Duc d'Anjou is heir to the throne; he's also interested in Marie, or at least in confusing the situation between the already-difficult triangle between Montpensier and Guise (who used to be best friends, but had a falling-out, to put it mildly, over Marie). The fourth man in the picture also has a relationship with Marie, but it's platonic, though he ends up falling in love with her, and may be the only one of all the men who actually loves her for herself. This is the Comte de Chabannes, who has been fighting on the Catholic side but who, after somewhat accidentally killing a pregnant Protestant peasant who was part of a group sheltering Huguenot soldiers, has renounced war and turned to gardening and study.

Marie ends up going to Paris and meeting the queen, watching her childhood girlfriend marry her (Marie's) father, fending off the attentions of the Duc d'Anjou and the anger of her jealous husband and the importuning of the Duc de Guise to run away with him, and finally chooses the Duc de Guise, only to learn that he's going to marry the Princesse de Clèves instead. Meanwhile, the Comte de Chabannes has been killed in a street fight, and the Duc d'Anjou has headed (I believe) to England to court Elizabeth I. The Prince de Montpensier warned Marie that if she went to the Duc de Guise, he wouldn't take her back, so in the end the Princesse de Montpensier is alone. In the short story by Madame de La Fayette (who also wrote the 1662 novel La Princesse de Clèves) Marie dies a few days later; in the movie, she might be headed for a convent, or suicide, or perhaps a new life somewhere, if there's anywhere a woman can get by alone in the late 17th century in northern Europe.

It's a beautifully-filmed movie, with grittily realistic battle scenes, jeweled fabrics and court dress, much riding of horses back and forth, and an unforgettable scene in which Marie's father walks into her bedroom as the maids are preparing her for her wedding night and slowly strolls around her as she stands naked in the middle of the room, looking her over to see that the goods he's selling to her husband (and her husband's father) are in prime form. Marie has been told by her mother that she must submit to what the men decide, and Marie later says the same thing to her friend, who is understandably upset at having to marry Marie's father, but the tragedy of this film is that Marie can't submit, and fights for what she wants, whether it's love or an education. It's a lush and lonely portrait of a young woman, and though I was very sad at the end of the film, I quite liked it. It's not showing again at PIFF but may be coming to an art-house theatre near you.