Academy Award-winner Kate Winslet stars in this romantic drama as Sabine, a strong-willed and talented landscape designer, who is chosen to build one of the main gardens at the new palace at Versailles in the court of King Louis XIV (Alan Rickman). In her new position of power, she challenges gender and class barriers while also becoming professionally and romantically entangled with the court’s renowned landscape artist André Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts).
This handsomely mounted costume drama never pretends to be a realistic historical drama. Sabine, a widowed gardener who lost her young daughter in an accident, is a blunt, strong-willed modern woman who seems radically out of place and out of time. Rather than trying to justify her modernity, the movie — written by Alison Deegan with Mr. Rickman and Jeremy Brock — accentuates the disparity between Sabine and her surroundings. She simply could not have existed in the 17th century. Ms. Winslet brings to the role her characteristically intrepid doggedness. Nothing is going to stop Sabine from being herself and doing her job. – NYT
Set in 1682.
Starring Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alan Rickman, Stanley Tucci, Helen McCrory.