【评论】A little chaos的北美影评

Variety ——Dennis Harvey
“A Little Chaos” is all too tidy as it imposes a predictable, pat modern sensibility on a most unconvincing depiction of late 17th-century French aristocratic life, with Kate Winslet starring as a green-thumbed widow hired to design part of the gardens at Versailles for Alan Rickman’s Louis XIV. Rickman’s first directorial effort since 1997’s “The Winter Guest” is a formulaic, broadly drawn historical fiction that won’t be an awards magnet, but could gain commercial traction amongst older audiences as costume-pic comfort food.
Winslet is appealing, of course, but one can’t help thinking she was more interesting when this spunky-female-entrepreneur-in-a-man’s-world role was called Mildred Pierce. The lamentably wooden Schoenaerts aside, no one else here is much challenged either, with competent work from expert thesps in one-dimensional support roles. Offering ham amid the brie are Rickman and in particular Stanley Tucci, who camps it up mercilessly as the King’s bisexual brother, smirking his way through stale bons mots.

THR ——David Rooney
For all its attempts at unconventionality, there*s precious little edge here.
While the dictates of filming a French story for an English-language international market are hard to get around, there’s sadly little sense of place here. That said, the story is engaging, the pretty locations and costumes easy on the eyes, and the cast capable if rarely required to do much — including Stanley Tucci, queening it up as the King’s foppish brother. Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone) delivers the requisite melancholy hunk with minimal nuance, and Rickman trots out his familiar laconic arched-eyebrow routine. Winslet’s mix of grace, gumption and private sadness is the chief reason to keep watching, but she deserves a more dynamic film.

Hitfix ——Gregory Ellwood
For a few minutes you have Tucci and Rickman’s on-screen antics making the movie feel like a Meryl Streep comedy (yes, that’s a thing), and at other points Winslet’s dramatic instincts push it two degrees away from "The Reader." Rickman and cinematographer Ellen Kuras (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) also provide a hectic look, jumping back and forth between big movie studio period piece and an interesting artistic direction that is usually reserved for the art house. Compiled over 116 minutes, it*s all sorts of jarring. Shockingly, none of these issues are the film’s biggest problem. That, sadly, lies in the casting of Schoenaerts.
First off, Schoenaerts and Winslet have almost zero chemistry on screen. There are no sparks between them no matter how hard the actors try. Their pairing is a total bust. Worse, because 90% of the cast is British playing French and speaking English, Schoenaerts’ continental European background makes him seem like a fish out of water (and he*s from Belgium). You could argue if he’d played a similar role in Sofia Coppola’s Versailles-set drama “Marie Antoinette,” at least that cast was so diverse he’d fit in more. In this case, Schoenaerts* presence seems as though he showed up wearing a Halloween costume at a masquerade ball.
In theory, “Chaos” should live and die on Winslet’s performance, but the direction is so all over the place you just have to give her credit for trying. She puts more effort into giving De Barra a true dramatic arc than some of her peers would (you could see a number of Hollywood actresses easily sleepwalking through a film like this). What makes it more eyebrow raising is that Winslet has usually had good taste in the projects she’s chosen. Sure, there are paycheck moments like “The Holiday” and “Divergent,” but, at worst, her indie choices are challenging. “Chaos” is certainly not that.

The Telegraph ——Tim Robey
Rickman and Deegan take their film perhaps a touch more seriously than we’re able to. Sabine carries the burden of a past trauma which may have something, just maybe, to do with a horse-and-carriage accident she keeps dredging up in flashbacks. Her position as a single woman in Louis’s court, raising eyebrows among the horticultural elite, gives the film a rather soggy foundation of common-or-garden feminism – it’s not very convincing about such a person having existed. And it*s much more entertaining whenever Stanley Tucci’s around as a bisexual court dandy. Winslet’s charming, though, and her chemistry with Schoenaerts’s brooding hunk is so palpable you could cut it with secateurs.

London Evening Standard ——David Sexton
Kate Winslet charms as a gardener at the Court of Louis XIV, but it*s not enough to keep this inauthentic piece from wilting.
A Little Chaos, scripted by Alison Deegan, startles by its bold inauthenticity of time and place (there’s no French at all, save the unavoidable names). It is sumptuously mounted and costumed, while Winslet looks a bohemian treat, with her long plaid skirts and leather satchel, like a very mature student. All the ingredients for a juicy romantic novelette are in place, almost none for a good film.

The Playlist ——Nikola Grozdanovic
Despite her free spirit and chaotic nature, Sabine is a tepidly one-note character, which is only one of the most obvious faults in “A Little Chaos.” Winslet invests an enthusiasm and conviction worthy of the character’s bland individuality, which is to say that this is a minor performance from a major actress. It doesn’t help that the chemistry between her and Schoenaerts builds and then fizzles during their first encounter, never to ripple back into life again. The Belgian actor, who*s been impressive lately, doesn’t seem to find any inspiration here, whether it’s because of the British accent he is forced to incorporate for a French character (though, to our ears, the accent sounds fine) or because La Norte, like Sabine, is less interesting than a 17th century doorknob. So a love meant to anchor this story has next to no passion. The film’s languid pacing, garish transitions from scene to scene, and a conflicting tone torn between drama, romance, and comedy each drag the entire affair ever-so-sluggishly towards a laughably kitsch conclusion.
In “A Little Chaos,” Rickman has directed a story containing not a single iota of passion, and represents one woman’s battle with her past without a single genuine fight. The film tries to be a drama, then a comedy, and then a romance, and it ends up failing to be anything but a laborious thing suspended in air, neither here nor there. Some intriguing dialogue, and a closet full of fantastic frocks, can’t help an impressive ensemble cast save “A Little Chaos” from being a lackadaisical picture, far removed from anything remotely exciting as chaos.

All hangups aside it was just great to see Kate Winslet on the big screen again but she could*ve done this in her sleep while blinded by silly hats and short of breath from a corse...
The movie suffers from what looks like underfunding since it skimps on anything that might back up the central subject matter which is meant to convey and continually references about how lush, overgrown, and imaginative De Barra*s work is. But again, an easy sit, especially if you*re costume inclined. Winslet and Schoenearts work fine together though their romance feels more talent-based than physical. Since their work is dramatic they sometimes feel like they*re in their own film. It*s not unlike those classic Disney fairy tales, really, where the leads are drawn as "beautiful" realistic-ish humans while the side characters are from another species, with oversized heads or comic limbs. Among the ensemble, most of the actors are delightful even if no one is remotely challenged (oh look Stanley Tucci doing his fun gay sidekick schtick again!). Jennifer Ehle (far on the periphery) and Helen McCrory (near the center of the action as Schoenaerts shady wife) both manage to play into the movies preference for types and caricature while also slyly suggesting actual individual character. As a result their scenes feel like whole new films sprouting up like weeds inside the one we got but that*s okay since this garden is wilted.

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点连接进去，硕大的标题看的就好心塞，再看楼主复制的评论也大多说电影不好。。可能是观众不太买账吧。。。A little chaos要演成标题的节奏？

哎，看看国内各种影评网站，习惯了就好...无论你拍什么片子，全世界喷子都早就准备好文章框架等着你上映往里面装。我的经验告诉我，写影评的不一定看过片子，有些好点的看过预告，有些甚至就是人云亦云还装的人模人样的...
反正，影评什么的，每个人有自己的见解罢了，我们还是等看了再说吧。

我印象最深的是今年上半年的张艺谋的＜归来＞，未上映时出了一则新闻，标题就是：斯皮尔伯格看影片哭了1h。然后影片一上映，各种吐槽赚眼泪，无聊泪点底的影评如雪片般纷涌而至，我和同学去看的时候还说买包抽纸去，结果......哎，影评真心越来越没品了，全球化现象