The Three Musketeers: Milady: winter comfort viewing as gallant as its heroes
Whither the swashbuckler? Whistling blades, candlelit dungeons with straw on the floor, bosoms heaving like blancmanges: to some of us, the genre always felt like an unimprovable package. But after the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise beached itself at the end of the noughties, the form largely fell out of fashion in Hollywood, with only Puss in Boots left carrying the torch.
This two-part French-language reworking of Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel, however, makes a strong case for its urgent revival. The frisky first instalment, subtitled D’Artagnan, was unfairly overlooked when it played British cinemas back in April. But this second one, which sees Eva Green’s Milady de Winter slinking to the fore, is a good excuse to either catch up or just dive in blind. (It more or less works as a standalone story, but opens with a quick TV-style recap.)
Why? In the unlikely event the phrase “Eva Green’s Milady de Winter” doesn’t clinch it, there is more of everything else that made the last one so much fun too: long-take plein-air swordplay, zippy repartee between likeable leads, and a plot that lunges from one quivery double-cross to the next. It’s the sort of film in which, within five minutes, Fran?ois Civil’s 90s-pin-up take on D’Artagnan has already vaulted over some battlements into a moat – and the fact the camera jumps off too, immediately after him, only underlines the jolly all-for-one ethos.
As before, a lot is going on. D’Artagnan is now scouring the land for his vanished lover Constance (Lyna Khoudri), while affable Porthos (Pio Marma?) and suave Aramis (Romain Duris) hunt for the soldier who has impregnated the latter’s now-nunneried younger sister, in the hope they can either persuade or browbeat him into doing the decent thing.
Meanwhile, Vincent Cassel’s perennially pained Athos vows to do his young son and heir proud at a coming battle against the Protestants at La Rochelle, on which the rest of the cast members also handily converge. And again, Green is perfection in a role that doesn’t so much suit her talents as feel like it was written specifically for her 175 years in advance. The actress brings a sensuous tension and heat to every second of her screen time: her take on the Milady character may be even more sleekly feline than the version in the famous 1980s Musketeers cartoon, and that one was actually a cat.
As yarns go, it is all comfortingly chunky and luxuriantly spun – winter comfort viewing that treats its audience as gallantly as its heroes treat their mission, while taking itself just seriously enough.
12A cert, 114 min. In cinemas from Friday December 15
