If niche movies are your forte, then you’re in for a treat with Alan Rickman’s second directorial effort, A Little Chaos. At a glance it’s a period piece about gardening. Delve a little deeper, though, and it possesses all of the pre-requisites for a successful time-gone-by movie, like a corseted Kate Winslet.
As feisty landscape designer, Sabine, Winslet is enlisted to craft a new garden for King Louis XIVs new palace at Versailles. At first, she ruffles the feathers of the court’s pre-existing landscaper, André Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts), who demands she conjure up stuffy, pedestrian designs. Naturally, their initial locked horns turn to locked lips as their workplace relationship evolves into a romantic entanglement.
In addition to sharing a co-writer credit with Alison Deegan and Jeremy Brock, Rickman co-stars in the flick as King Louis. You can spot him in the latest trailer, which, for the most part, is more concerned with the burgeoning romance between Winslet and Schoenaerts.
Co-starring Stanley Tucci and Danny Webb, A Little Chaos arrives in U.S. theaters on March 23, followed by its U.K. release on April 17th.
Madame Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet) is an unlikely candidate for landscape architect of the still‐to-be-completed Palace of Versailles. She has little time for the classical, ordered designs of the man who hires her, the famous architect Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts). However, as she works on her creation, she finds herself drawn to the enigmatic Le Nôtre and forced to negotiate the perilous rivalries and intricate etiquette of the court of King Louis XIV (Alan Rickman). But Sabine is made of strong stuff; her honesty and compassion help her to overcome both the challenges of her newfound popularity, and an unspeakable tragedy from her past, to win the favour of the Sun King and the heart of Le Nôtre.
