Let Joy Reign Supreme

France, 1719. Louis XV is a child and the country is run by the regent, Philippe, Duke of Orléans. While the court continues in waste, banqueting and licence, a group of nobles in Brittany is preparing a revolt. The regent's adviser, the Abbé Dubois, sees an opportunity in it. Bertrand Tavernier directs. Philippe Noiret plays the regent, Jean Rochefort plays Dubois, Jean-Pierre Marielle plays Pontcallec. The approach breaks the habit of period cinema. Historical films usually show the court as splendour; Tavernier gives you the leftovers, the mud, the disease and the actual poverty of the population instead. The revolt is not heroic either: it is incompetent, disorganised and lost before it starts. The regent is an unusual figure too. Philippe is not cruel but enlightened and exhausted; he wants reform and carries none of it out, and the film puts the real tragedy there. It won several Césars including best director, and was treated as a starting point in the rethinking of French historical cinema. The sequence at the end showing the poverty of the people is a summary of the question Tavernier pursued across his whole filmography: history is written above and paid for below. Who it is for: viewers who like French historical drama and films that look coldly at power. Who it is not for: the plot is thin and the cast is large, and without knowing the politics of the period it is hard to follow.