Queen Margot

Queen Margot (La Reine Margot, 1994) — a French historical drama directed by Patrice Chéreau that you can watch online on iFILM, starring Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil and Jean-Hugues Anglade. August 1572: the Catholic princess Marguerite de Valois is married off to Protestant king Henry of Navarre in a last-ditch attempt to stop the religious civil war tearing France apart. The peace lasts four days.

Then Catherine de' Medici (Virna Lisi) sets the massacre in motion. St. Bartholomew's Night wipes out thousands of Huguenots across Paris. A wounded nobleman named La Môle (Vincent Perez) pounds on Margot's door not for romance but for survival. Chéreau shoots the carnage with newsreel immediacy — there is nothing noble or ceremonial about any of it.

Based on Alexandre Dumas' novel but stripped of its swashbuckling varnish, this is court politics as a slaughterhouse. Virna Lisi claimed the Best Actress prize at Cannes for her reptilian Medici, though Adjani is equally raw. Stream Queen Margot (1994) online on iFILM.