The Princess of Montpensier

Bertrand Tavernier - 2011
The opening movement is pretty spectacular; a fast tracking camera, left to right, through that field of war, craning up in a huge swoosh, continuing to follow; we have continuations of these massive movements throughout the picture. This is combined with a lot of SRS stuff, though not just cut on dialogue, it reflects P.O.V. among other things.
Tavernier gives great thought to the direction, each shot is used to convey the emotion, the unsaid, through eyeline matches, pans to important information, and so on. When this means sticking close to one character in an SRS, and some other features, it results in an effective picture. I didn't however, understand a lot of the decisions. At a moment of tension he had a habit of cutting to a, for me, overly elaborate high angle establishing shot, which dissipated the tension. Was this deliberate? Also, the pans and tracks, especially off the back of Renoir, were fast and jerky- little use of the tripod here, throughout- and occassionally seemed a little clumsy, swoosh pans making up for a slightly awkward staging.
Despite these reservations, I liked this film. The big 'Scope let us see children playing in the background, there were many nice details. Horses riding are always fun, especially in the long shot. The plot was pretty engaging, though I'm unsure about the acting.
Perhaps there was a slight surfeit of ideas; that we can't see love, but have faith it's there, is alluded to, but I didn't feel that every scene had justification on its own to exist. I liked this, the direction was thoughtful, but it's not a film that I would look to return to.