THE AFFAIR OFTHE NECKLACE
Hokey, embarrassing costumer.
Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (mild violence, brief nudity). At the Lincoln Square, the Angelika. Opens in more theaters next week.
IN France in 1785, a woman who called herself Countess Jeanne de la Motte-Valois pulled off an amazing, complicated con.
She tricked a wealthy cardinal into believing that Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, was in love with him and that she herself was a confidante of the queen.
The countess persuaded the cardinal to buy a fabulous 2,800-carat diamond necklace as a gift which she would pass on to the queen. Instead, the con artist and her husband fenced the jewelry.
When the caper was discovered, a scandal ensued that may well have contributed to the fall of the monarchy four years later during the French Revolution.
“The Affair of the Necklace,” by Charles Shyer (“Father of the Bride”), is based on this fascinating and bizarre episode. But it’s hard to imagine how Shyer and script writer John Sweet could have brought this tale to the screen in a cruder, cornier or less interesting way.
It’s a bad sign that the film begins with one of those breathy, vaguely Arabic-sounding enigma-style songs that were de rigeur in costume movies, even before one was used to such good effect in “Gladiator.”
It’s a worse sign when next the narrator (Brian Cox) gives a long introduction before the action begins with a flash-forward of Hilary Swank in a courtroom.
Almost everything about this movie – except the pretty photography and perhaps the hairstyling – is crass and embarassing, even if you’re not bothered by the pathetic dependence on voice-overs to explain the plot, or the foolish anachronisms in the backstory Sweet invents to make the con-artist heroine a sympathetic figure.
Here, Jeanne de la Motte-Valois is an aristocrat whose family was dispossessed of its property because the father was sympathetic to “the Resistance” (and who lies, cheats and steals for “honor” as much as for money).
When the queen (Joely Richardson, whose talent is cruelly wasted in an underwritten role), and the authorities refuse to deal with Jeanne’s claims to land and titles, the young woman embarks on a plot together with her lover Retaux (Simon Baker) and her philandering husband (Adrian Brody).
Using forged letters and a stolen handkerchief, and with the help of magician Count Cagliostro (Christopher Walken, scene-stealing and hilarious amid the general humorlessness), they manage to convice Cardinal de Rohan (Jonathan Pryce) that the queen is interested in a close friendship.
Swank as Jeanne looks rabbit-terrified throughout, either by what she has to wear or, more likely, by the atrocious dialogue she is required to deliver.
Many of her lines are obviously dubbed or looped, and she veers from a bad English accent – to something uncomfortably Mid-Atlantic.
But in general, the acting in “The Affair of the Necklace” declines in direct proportion to the amount of dialogue an actor has to speak. Perhaps this is because all the characters speak in costume-talk: a dialect that is half 20th-century suburban, half ye-olde-worlde and 100 percent unbelievable.
It would all be enjoyable as camp if only it weren’t so dull.