Tt have been dozens of (mostly inadequate) attempts to adapt Alexandre Dumas’s titanic tale of revenge for film and TV, but that doesn’t stop people from trying; this time, it’s the team behind the current two-part adaptation of The Three Musketeers. Compared to the dim-witted Gérard Depardieu in the well-regarded 1998 TV miniseries, lead actor Pierre Niney is a lightweight in the role of the Count, playing his second major French icon after Yves Saint Laurent in 2014. But Niney’s physical slenderness and poise give the film something special, a hint of vulnerability beneath the many masks, a fatal psychic wound that can never heal.
Dumas’ timeless scenario cannot be improved upon: young sailor Edmond Dantès (Niney) is imprisoned for eternity in the Chateau d’If, Marseille’s own Devil’s Island, after being portrayed as a Bonapartist by the shady prosecutor Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) and betrayed by his pal Fernand (Bastien Bouillon), a rival for the hand of his future wife Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier). Dantès leaves behind an impossible fortune and receives a crash course in the arts of gentlemanship from fellow prisoner Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino). He resurfaces as an enigmatic aristocrat in Parisian high society. Behind the ostentatious oriental mansion and impeccable manners lies a seething volcano of vengeance. In other words, he is the French Batman.
Directors Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière, screenwriters of the Musketeers films, carry out the necessary revision of the novel with efficiency and even elegance. Instead of Dumas’s sprawl, they focus the intrigue on two protégés: the dagger-eyed foundling André (Julien de Saint Jean) and the pretty Ottoman princess Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), whose romances are designed to hit the Count’s traitors where it hurts. The pacing is so jarring throughout the film’s three acts, however, that neither the original themes (vengeance versus justice; the Count’s god complex) nor the newly introduced ones (a very social-media-era emphasis on the reality behind the façade) make more than a faint impression.
The climax is a fast-paced, good-looking gallop of Mission: Impossible-style masquerading, languid courtyard scheming and occasional bursts of foolhardiness that clocks in at three hours, with no breaks for quail rolls. It’s also done in an average Netflix-esque production style, with plenty of drone approaches into opulent castles and stair-climbing; handy for streaming sales, but less apt for locating the rancor and gothic undertones that gave weight to Dumas’s maximalism.
Thankfully, Niney is fully in the swing of things, enjoying cheesy dress-up scenes oddly reminiscent of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther series, acting in French, Italian, Greek, English and Franglais, and handling a brutal dinner-party reveal. But he does better work alongside Demoustier in the scenes where the long-separated lovers reunite but can’t believe it; their micro-expressions signal bottomless depths of emotion. The dramatization itself could have used more of that razor-sharp finesse to complement her insistent whipping hand.
