I’ve got to admit my immediate reaction after watching The Rose of Versailles was to scratch my head because I was utterly confused as to what the outcome of this fictionalized, anime-musical (I know, it’s a mouthful) version of the French Revolution was because it tries to do so many things in its 1 hour 54 minute run time that I was left wondering, “What really was the point?” at the end of it all. The film tells the story of the last queen of France from when she was brought to France till the Storming of the Bastille. It then parallels Marie’s story with that of a woman named Oscar, who is assigned to be Marie’s guardian as her first role on the way to becoming the commander of the French army, like her father before her. Honestly, the way the film begins, it almost implies that it’s going to make these two women love interests for each other, but instead it chooses to give us two separate romantic storylines that come at different points through the film.
The underwhelming aspects of The Rose of Versailles are plentiful, but my first big qualm about the film is that it completely misses the opportunity to be a good musical and gives us some generic anime visuals with flying people and flower frames to tell the story during the songs. What I mean is, it hopes to use the songs to propel the story, but it almost feels like it’s placing a burden on the rest of the story, especially in the first half, where the songs come too often and don’t really have much to show. The music, on the other hand, is typically composed in the style of anime songs, and it’s fun if that’s the style you enjoy, but there’s nothing extraordinary about it that’ll make you want to listen to it outside of watching the movie.
What’s peculiar is how the film diverts attention from Marie to Oscar between its two acts. What I mean here is that it starts off focusing on Marie’s side of things, her desires, her life, etc., while the second half solely focuses on these same things for Oscar. This is rather distracting, especially because we know both characters and they’ve both been explored to different degrees, and it just makes for a confusing viewing experience. More importantly, there’s a stark contrast between the two women, who are meant to be friends of a sort. Clearly it wants to push the idea that Oscar is more worth rooting for than the Queen of France. I don’t think this is necessarily a problem, but it also doesn’t do a very good job handling this odd divide.
The storytelling is rapid and puts you in a disarray. Sure, it’s about historical events in France, but it never gives off this impression because it’s solely focused on the romantic prospects of both protagonists. Even in terms of visuals, the scenes are way too busy. And of course it’s a film that’s less than 2 hours long, so it doesn’t really have time to go deep into anything; it just skims through events with a narrator giving us a quick one-liner about what’s going on. The film is based on a shojo manga written 50 years ago. This manga then inspired an anime spanning 40 episodes, so you can imagine it must be much more expansive than this mere 2-hour film.
To be fair, the concept is most certainly intriguing, and I suppose I can understand the popularity of the story back in the day, yet I struggle to understand why it would be chosen to be made into a film all these years later. I think this film suffers from its short run time, despite being rather longish for an anime movie. As a whole, it’s a movie that’s quite lackluster and doesn’t genuinely captivate you as a viewer because it’s all over the place. Oscar is a very interesting character, though, and I would honestly watch an entire series about her if it were well-paced and well-executed. She’s an enigma, but I would also have liked to have seen Marie Antoinette as one, too. It’s interesting how the film paints the two characters’ stark differences as the reason for their ultimate motivations. I guess if we had to get to the bottom of it, the story is simply trying to pit one noble against the other to ultimately decide who deserves a better ending. Yet, if Marie Antoinette was painted in a more empathetic light, it might’ve made for more interesting parallels.
At its heart, The Rose of Versailles is purely a romance movie, so it kind of leaves everything else in the shadows, including character exploration and the French Revolution. It definitely feels very “Romeo and Juliet” in bits and clearly takes inspiration from some classic works such as that one. But character motivations are entirely missing even for the lead characters, who feel more 2D than their drawings. It is unfortunate I haven’t had the chance to check out the original manga or watch the anime show, because from what I read, it sounds like it explored the themes that this film skims over in an in-depth manner, really giving us more than just a sappy teen romance and delivering a powerful story of politics, love, and war.
In all honesty, I feel like this movie was unnecessary, and something entirely new would’ve been better to explore. I definitely think the musical bits make it entirely bizarre and don’t help its cause at all. Despite not having seen many anime films, I can say with confidence that this is not what they’re known for. Instead, they’re much more engaging and emotional. This is just a superficial mess that tries to cook too extravagant a meal, making everything tasteless. I’d give The Rose of Versailles 1 out of 5 stars. I can’t even lie; I was super bored watching it.
