THE HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
CAPSULE: A tale of adventure and love in the time of cholera. An Italian revolutionary and a beautiful and wealthy French woman, each with a mission, repeatedly encounter and help each other in 1832 France. Jean-Paul Rappeneau gives us a high-spirited, yet solid historical adventure that excites but never goes over the top into swashbuckling. Beautifully filmed and nicely acted. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4)
It is 1832 and the threat of Napoleon is over. Still Italy knows no peace. Twelve years earlier, inspired by a revolt in Spain, the Neapolitans arose and forced King Ferdinand I to give the country a constitution. A congress of European governments, meeting at Troppau and Laibach, decided it must discourage all such revolutions, which might, after all, spread to other countries. The Congress gave Austria a mandate to march into Italy and to restore things to the way they had been before the constitution. Their rule was marred by uprisings, not surprisingly, including a 1821 Piedmont revolution put down in less than a month by forces of royalists and Austrians. The 1831 uprisings in Modena and Parma met a similar fate. But uprisings against the royalist government and especially the invading Austrians continue. Many ranking officers in the various rebellions find things a bit hot for them in Italy and find sanctuary in France. They were also finding support from like-minded Frenchmen, disillusioned with their own king Louis Philippe. He had been chosen as King in part for his liberal viewpoints. The reality disappointed the people, however, after the new king had ruthlessly put down a workers rebellion in Lyon the previous year.
Angelo Pardi (played by Olivier Martinez), an officer in the Revolutionary Army, is in France with gold collected there that will help finance revolution ... if he can get it back to his country intact. Austrian agents are also in France, hunting down the enemies of the Italian royalist government. The French are generally sympathetic, but just now they have an even more frightening and implacable enemy. One that can strike at anyone, highborn or commoner equally. An epidemic of cholera haunts the land. And making the situation even more dangerous, the people hold any number of strange ideas of what causes and what prevents the disease. Any stranger might be accused of being a well-poisoner and hung by angry mobs anxious to do anything that has any chance of protecting them from the disease. Pardi faces a double threat from the Austrians specifically looking for him and from the French who in their ignorance are looking to kill any strangers who may possibly be visiting this disease on them. On the run Pardi finds himself in the house of a beautiful aristocrat Pauline de Theu (Juliette Binoche). She hides him and helps him, little knowing that their paths would cross again multiple times. A good deal of what makes this film engrossing is its view of the medicine of the period. While that is not the primary focus of the story, it figures heavily in the plot, not unlike RESTORATION earlier this year.
Jean-Paul Rappeneau, who five years ago gave us his terrific adaptation of CYRANO DE BERGERAC gives us another delightful historical excursion, beautifully acted and photographed. Like CYRANO, HORSEMAN has a clever wit that shows itself at odd and unexpected moments. There are a few enjoyable digs at the aristocracy of France. One particularly enjoyable scene involves the reactions at a dinner party to Pauline's recent past. It should be noted that this film takes place in a France that the previous year had produced the novel NOTRE DAME DE PARIS (bearing little similarity to an animated film to be based on it near the end of the next century) and the film even makes some mention of Victor Hugo. The cast will be mostly unfamiliar to American audiences, though Juliette Binoche will be familiar for roles in THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING and BLUE. Binoche has the sort of exquisite demure beauty that seems to be a staple of French films. However her role rarely calls for her to show much versatility. Martinez is moderately the more interesting of the two actors lead actors, but perhaps because his role is better written. There is also a small role for Gerard Depardieu who also does not get a chance to show much range. Martinez has the greatest opportunity to act except for a sequence for Binoche toward the end of the film.
With the exception of a modest resurrection of the Western it has become very rare to see American films set prior to World War II. Most serious historical films these days are coming from Europe. The same Hollywood that made great films like QUEEN CHRISTINA and THE SCARLET EMPRESS back in the 1930s now seems to shy away from historical settings, perhaps for fear of lack of interest. In any case, for those with no fear of subtitles, this may well be the most rewarding film of the summer. I give it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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