#Farewell my queen book download full#

Romain WindingвЂ™s mobile camera takes a decidedly rough-hewn, inelegant view of its opulent surroundings, often chasing Sidonie down candlelit hallways from a position behind the back of her head. At the same time, Jacquot proves nimbly attentive to the shifting undercurrents below stairs, as Sidonie uses her every secret and wile to glean information and gain the queenвЂ™s favor.Д.p. Indeed, the filmвЂ™s shrewdest aspect is the sly, amused manner in which it observes how clueless monarchs and noblemen react to the news that their subjects want them beheaded in Marie AntoinetteвЂ™s case, it means tearfully rereading and burning old love letters while ordering her attendants to pack up her jewelry. The spectacle of the queenвЂ™s endlessly delusional and self-absorbed behavior as perceived by her bemused but duty-bound servants becomes a motif throughout.

#Farewell my queen book download full#

The mildly Sapphic overtones come to a modest boil in an emotionally fraught scene played out in full view of Sidonie, peering through a wide-open doorway that becomes a proscenium arch for the audience. SidonieвЂ™s disillusionment is twofold: As it gradually dawns on her that no one at Versailles is safe, she also realizes her infatuation with the queen means little to Marie Antoinette herself, who is entirely besotted with the worldly Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen). Campan (Noemie Lvovsky), ever-attentive to matters of protocol even as crisis looms.ДЄnd loom it does, as Sidonie learns the next morning of the storming of the Bastille, an event that throws the palace into a royal commotion. Quiet and reserved, as crafty as she is literate, this dark-haired young consort treasures her unusually intimate if platonic rapport with the queen occasionally, SidonieвЂ™s mild liberties draw the ire of fussy first lady-in-waiting Mme. ThereвЂ™s barely a ripple of anxiety in an idyllic early scene at the Petit Trianon, the chateau refuge where Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger) enjoys the company of her personal reader, Sidonie Laborde (Seydoux). These ground rules allow for a partial, fragmented view of events while effectively conveying the whirlwind of confusion and gossipy sense of schadenfreude buzzing in the corridors of Versailles before the regimeвЂ™s collapse. From the tiniest garret to the Hall of Mirrors, where Marie-Antoinette stands alone and terrified in the dark, Chantal Thomas shows us a world on the edge of oblivion and an intimate portrait of the woman who, like 'fire in motion,' was its center.As adapted by Jacquot and Gilles Taurant from Chantal ThomasвЂ™ 2002 historical fiction, this French-Spanish co-production filters its momentous events through a realist prism, operating within a tight timeframe - July 14-17, 1789 - and adhering to the unspoken requirement that Lea SeydouxвЂ™s protagonist be present in nearly every scene. Agathe-Sidonie watches as the Queen's attempts to flee are aborted her most intimate friend betrays her and the King, appearing to sleepwalk through this crisis, never alters his routine of visiting the Apollo Salon several times a day to consult a giant crystal thermometer. Soon Versailles's beauty is nothing more than a shell encasing rising panic and chaos.

But with the shocking news that someone has woken the King in the night, order begins to disintegrate and word of the fall of the Bastille seeps into court. When Agathe-Sidonie is summoned to the Queen's side on the morning of the 14th, Versailles is a miniature universe, sparkling with every outward appearance of happiness and power, peopled with nobles of minutely calibrated rank, and run according to a hundred-year-old ritual called the Perfect Day. Now exiled in Vienna, she looks back twenty-one years to the legendary opulence of Versailles and meticulously reconstructs July 14, 15, and 16 of 1789.

It was once the job of Madame Agathe-Sidonie Laborde to read books aloud to Marie-Antoinette.