|
RIDICULE
- This article is about the French film Ridicule. For a dictionary definition of the word ridicule, see the Wiktionary entry.
Ridicule is a 1996 French film set in the 18th century at the decaying court of Versailles. The film depicts a world where wit and the art of ridicule was how citizens gained the privilege of meeting with King Louis XVI to beg him for royal money and backing and how their social status rose and fell at court. The social injustices of late 18th century France are harshly portrayed, especially in critique of corrupt religion and the carelessness of the aristocrats at Versailles who were willing to condemn others to death with sharp wit and ridicule to further their own ambitions.
Plot Summary
A short opening sequence begins the movie at the court of Versailles. The aristocrat Milletail, who had been ostracized by the court thirty years before for falling at a ball and who had been forced to move to the Americas, returns to seek revenge upon the man who ridiculed him those years before. He urinates on him and then leaves, telling the maid the man, now old and infirm, had an accident.
The Marquis Grégoire Ponceludon de Malavoy is a minor aristocrat and engineer. living in the Dombes, bog land north of Lyon. He is one of the rare aristocrats that actually care about the plight of the peasants beneath him and so is horrified at the high rate of sickness and death caused by various diseases carried by mosquitos that live in the swamps. Being an engineer, he is able to draw up plans to drain the marshes; however, these are far too costly for him to carry out by himself and so he travels to Versailles with the hope of asking Louis XIVfor royal backing.
Just before arriving at Versailles Ponceludon is robbed and beaten in a forest. He is found by the aristocratic doctor Marquis de Bellegarde, a great wit at court, and brought to his house. While recouperating, Bellegarde begins to sympathize with Ponceludon's need and takes him under his wing, teaching him about wit (l'esprit), the primary way to be recognized at Versailles. Ponceludon soon proves himself to be very witty, although his provincial background shows through when he laughs at his own jokes with an open mouth, and he is invited to more court parties and gatherings.
While at one such small salon party with Bellegarde, he plays a game in which each person picks four words (each set of two rhyme) and must construct a small verse with them to demonstrate their extraordinary wit. L'abbé de Vilecourt, it is seen, cheats with the help of his lover, Madame de Blayac, a beautiful and rich recent widow. (It was her husband who was urinated upon in the opening scene). Before he successfully makes a verse he reveals to Madame de Blayac that he knows of her treachery, and when he leaves she hurries out after him, begging him not to reveal the cheating and ruin her and the abbé's reputations. He promises not to, showing his more innocent side that came from his provincial background.
Ponceludon soon becomes realized as one of the greatest wits at court, and after he ridicules an older and pompous man to the great delight of others he is recognized by Louis XVI. To petition the king himself, however, he must prove his lineage, and though his family's records were lost in a fire he is eventually recognized as a Marquis by the court geneologist. While in wating for an appointment, a process that can take months of sitting in an antechamber, he meets an older aristocrat who has been waiting for weeks to see the king and has fallen asleep. The abbé removes the man's shoes and tosses them into the fire, and when the aristocrat's name is finally called he finds he cannot see the king because he is missing his shoes. After begging to borrow a pair to no avail, he hangs himself the same day, giving Ponceludon his first glance of the high stakes at court.
Meanwhile, Mathilde de Bellegarde, the doctor's daughter, has arrived at her father's house. She is to be engaged to Monsieur de Montaliéri, an old and rich aristocrat whose wife is dying. The marriage is acceptable to Mathilde, a beautiful young woman, only because the old man has money: it is stipulated in the engagement agreement that she will receive an allowance that she can give to her father to assist in paying off his debts. Mathilde is extremely interested in science, a reflection of her upbringing (Bellegarde was influenced by Rousseau and his book Emile that emphasized a child's free choice in his/her interests) and will also receive a laboratory from Montaliéri. Mathilde is warned, though, that if she ever enters court life or darkens her innocence and virginity the marriage will be called off.
Ponceludon quickly strikes up a friendship with Mathilde who begins to dread more and more her upcoming marriage; eventually their relationship progresses into love and she breaks the engagement with Montaliéri. At the same time, however, Madame de Blayac attempts to bring Ponceludon into her orbit. After the disgrace of the abbé, who mocks God in front of the king too much, he soon comes to sleep with her in exchange for her putting in a good word for him at court, and in the end she is the one to assure him a meeting with the king.She cruelly engineers a meeting with Mathilde's father by calling him in his capacity as a Doctor; Ponceludon, unaware, is still in her bedroom. Thus Mathilde soon knows what has occurred. However, Ponceludon joins the king's entourage and, after showing off his engineering prowess, secures a private meeting with the king to discuss the draining of the Dombes.
Ponceludon, however, insults a cannoner when he gives improved plans for the gun in front of the king and so, after being insulted by the cannoner, he challenges him to a duel. Madame de Blayac pleads for him to escape Versailles and the duel and return only for the king; Ponceludon apparently agrees to her and takes a coach headed for her residence in the country. When he is just out of the city, however, he pens a letter to Mme de Blayac, offering an explanation for his love affair with her, to be delivered in case of his death, and asks the driver to stop and proceeds with the duel under the supervision of Bellegarde. Mathilde, waiting in a coach along the way, is greatly relieved when Ponceludon wins the duel, killing the cannoner, and the Bellegards and Poncelduon return to their home together. However, when Ponceludon later shows up for his meeting with the king, he is informed that Louis XVI cannot meet with someone who has killed a man right after his death, although he is assured that it was the correct thing to do to uphold his honor.
Madame de Blayac is furious when she learns that Ponceludon has left her for Mathilde and it appears that she has actually loved him. She thus begins to plan with some 'friends', including Milletail, the aristocrat who fell at court earlier. Ponceludon is invited to a costume ball only for wits and accepts the invitation. Upon arriving at the ball with Mathilde, he is stolen by Mme de Blayac to dance and then is tripped by Milletail in the same fashion he was thirty years before. After spectacularly falling and being named the Marquis des Antipodes by Milletail, Ponceludon renounces the excesses of court life and resolves to leave Versailles for the Dombes with Mathilde.
The movie closes in Dover, England, in 1794, after the French Revolution. Bellegarde is shown to have fled there, for as an aristocrat he would have been most likely subject to death under the Directory. He converses for a short while with his English host about how they can see France across the Channel. The Englishman cracks a joke, which Bellegarde hopefully identifies as wit and then realizes to be only English humor. Text appears on screen to inform the viewer that Citizens Grégoire and Mathilde Ponceludon successfully drained the Dombes and live well in revolutionary France, their selfless actions ultimately benefitting them as opposed to the high and fast life at Versailles.
Spoilers end here.
Cast
Awards
Won
Nominations
External links
|