Situating La Princesse de Montpensier: Tavernier’s adaptation of Madame de Lafayette

Abstract

Abstract When Bertrand Tavernier discussed his project to make a film adaptation of Madame de Lafayette’s novel La Princesse de Montpensier, he explained the contradictory nature of his project. On the one hand, he wanted to attempt a true account of both the events and the exotic nature of France in the 1550s, but on the other hand, he then added a potentially contradictory challenge to his project, proposing that his camera become ‘contemporary’ to the historical events and feelings depicted while at the same time convincing us that these historical events could be taking place in today’s Paris, and seem completely modern. This ‘chronological contradiction’ between what can be termed the exotic flavour of the Renaissance versus an injection of a flavour of contemporaneity – the endotic – will be examined in the way Tavernier develops the portrayal of the spirit of the Renaissance in language that is particularly resonant with the very terms that both Du Bellay and Ronsard employed to capture the epistemology of their times. This exotic level of the film will then be contrasted with the way Tavernier manages to give us an endotic representation of the Paris of the twenty-first century.