Benoît Jacquot's tense, absorbing, pleasurably original look at three days in the life and lies of a doomed monarch.

Control is the operative element in Benoît Jacquot's work, with the main caveat being that when someone has it, someone else does not.

Historical drama set in the early days of the French revolution is intelligent Euro eye candy at its most lavish.

Working from Chantal Thomas' novel, Jacquot doesn't entirely scrape the gloss off this love triangle, which plays neither as a florid bodice-ripper nor as emotionally complex as it might have been. It stays on the surface, but at least that surface is gorgeous.

Once the rote plot takes over - the tension brought on by the film's you-are-there verisimilitude quickly devolves into soapily overwrought theatrics.