Synopsis
That Night of Varennes (La Nuit de Varennes, 1982) is an Italian-French historical comedy directed by Ettore Scola that you can watch online on iFILM. June 20, 1791: Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are on the road north, fleeing a revolution they no longer control. That same night, a mail coach rolls in the same direction, carrying a company that makes no obvious sense.
Marcello Mastroianni plays an aging Casanova, his entire world dissolving with the old order. Harvey Keitel is Thomas Paine, still burning with the fever of revolution he helped start. Hanna Schygulla is one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting, who knows what is happening on the road ahead and says nothing. Jean-Louis Barrault rounds out the ensemble as French novelist Restif de la Bretonne. They debate liberty, monarchy and desire while history turns on the other side of the window.
Scola uses the carriage as a last salon — a space where the Enlightenment talks itself out as the world it built comes apart. The film is sharper and stranger than its comedy framing suggests, and Mastroianni's Casanova, vain and lucid in equal measure, is one of his most unusual late-career performances. Stream That Night of Varennes (1982) online on iFILM.
Starring
Recommendations
Comments 0