Marguerite (Xavier Giannoli, 2015): France, Czech Republic, Belgium

Reviewed by Adam Holm, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2016. Arlington Theater.

Experiencing the start of the closing night film “Marguerite” in Arlington Theater was horrible and a really felt with all the people behind the production, when the English subtitles wouldn’t play at the French film. I don’t who has the responsibility when something like that happens, but the audience reaction was really bad. After this terrible start, i really believed that the closing film was going to fail. But i was wrong. I have never experienced an audience changing their behavior so fast in a theater in my whole life. It was almost like seeing the audience at “The Knight Of Cups” turning into the audience at “The Little Prince”. And it was with a good reason; Xavier Giannoli did an amazing job telling this story about Marguerite. A wealthy lady living in the 1920’s with a huge passion for music and especially opera. The problem about her huge passion is that she can’t sing but she is too rich and powerfull that anyone dares to tell her. Having a friend or a family member enjoying something they are not good at is probably a problem we all have experienced. The whole dilemma about telling person or not to tell the person is really the main theme in this film, which is written and produced so well.

The cinematography, editing and sound is magnificent nicely done in “Marguerite” which is why the audience changed their mind so quickly. The actual music was also on point because the director Xavier Giannoli and the main character Catherine Frot showed the audience how real opera is supposed to sound and how horrible Catherine sounds. The last thing to mention is this film is that the production design var amazing, and it really felt being in the 1920’s when watching the film. I really love how film makers can create a world that goes back a 100 years without the audience even thinking about how hard it is.

I would definitely recommend friends, family or strangers to go watch this beautiful story about Marguerite. I do believe it is a true story about this woman from the 1920’s France, and if not they did a great job to make me believe in the story. Go watch it!