A dress, a dream — and few surprises

   Mike Leigh veteran Lesley Manville plays a seamstress who longs to own an original Christian Dior dress in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. I can't quite say that I wish Mrs. Harris hadn't gone anywhere, but this adaptation of a 1958 Paul Gallico novel adds little seasoning to its comfort-food approach to cinema.

   Motivated by a beautiful dress she sees in the closet of a woman for whom she cleans house, the widow Harris comes into some money, heads for Paris, attends an exclusives private showing of Dior originals, and tries to purchase one. 

   Mrs. Harris's objective pushes the story into class-distinction territory. No one at the house of Dior -- especially gatekeeper Mme. Colbert (a stern Isabelle Huppert) — believes that the low-born Mrs. Harris deserves to be in the same room with so much elegance.

   Mrs. Harris finds a champion in the widowed Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson), an aristocrat who insists that she be allowed to watch the showing and buy whatever she chooses. 

   Manville has no trouble carrying the movie as an increasingly assertive woman who will not be denied, but director Anthony Fabian seldom pushes against the movie's predictable stitching.

   A subplot centers on a top Dior model (Alba Baptista) who entices Dior's accountant (Andre Lucas Bravo). She reads Sartre's Being and Nothingness and insists she'd rather be studying philosophy than working as a high-class clothes horse. 

   Cliche? Of course. And, by the way, it’s doubtful that she could keep herself in make-up based on a philosophy student’s income.

   Formula (though gently applied) doesn't stop there. Mrs. Harris not only wants a dress but becomes a feisty advocate for the working stiffs who produce Dior's fabulous clothes.

   Manville works hard but the movie -- never credible to begin with -- becomes increasingly difficult to swallow as it labors to wrap things up.

   Oh well, one thing remains true: It's nearly impossible to weave a first-class movie out of material that may not be threadbare but shows an awful lot of wear.

Love in a time of brutal war

There's at least as much passion in the filmmaking as in the various romances in Bertrand Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier, a 16th century story set against a backdrop of brutal war between Roman Catholics and Protestant Huguenots.

Philippe Sarde's edgy score and Tavernier's fluid camera infuse this period piece with plenty of urgency. Tavernier also reminds us that few conflicts are more vicious than religious wars, a message that resonates as loudly today as it did in the 1500s.

The Princess of Montpensier is based on a short story by Madame de La Fayette, a 17th century writer who’s credited with having penned the first historical novel, The Princess of Cleves. Tavernier preserves La Fayette’s fascination with courtly intrigue, and also gives us a vivid feel for life in war-torn France during the 1500s.

If the public life of France is torn apart by war, the private lives of the movie’s characters seems equally tumultuous. A series of clashing passions revolve around Marie (Melanie Thierry), a young woman who’s forced into marriage by a father who’s more interested in cementing a land deal than in ensuring his daughter’s happiness.

The dashing Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel) – Marie’s original beau -- continues his pursuit, even after Marie has been married off to Prince de Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet). Later, Marie turns the head of yet another man, the dashing Duc d’Anjou (Raphael Personnaz).

As the story unfolds, Marie’s husband becomes increasingly jealous – and with good cause.

The movie’s most interesting male character arrives in the person of Comte de Chabannes (Lambert Wilson), a warrior who decides to withdraw from battle after he kills a pregnant woman. Comte de Chabannes, who taught the Prince de Montpensier the arts of war, becomes Marie’s tutor, instructing her in everything from the reading to herbal cures. He, too, falls under Marie’s spell.

Each of the men desires Marie for different reasons: the prince because she’s his wife; de Guise because he can’t have her; Duc d’ Anjou because he’s vain; and Comte de Cabannes because Marie revives his sense of youth and innocence. The Comte’s love probably is the purest and least self-serving.

All of this might have been more effective had Thierry been able to endow the princess with a little more mystery. The buxom, blonde Thierry plays a young woman who has yet to learn to conceal her intentions, assuming she even knows them. I suppose that's the way she is, but it makes the story less interesting than it should be.

I’m a great admirer of Tavernier’s work – from A Sunday in the Country to Captain Conan with a stopover at ‘Round Midnight. Some of Tavernier’s recent films (In the Electric Mist and Holy Lola) have not received wide exposure in the U.S., but he remains one of the world’s important filmmakers. A director who refuses to be imprisoned by genre, Tavernier seems to break new personal ground in nearly every movie.

Princess of Montpensier allows Tavernier to pit large-scale historical events against a personal story of less-than-epic proportions, and Tavernier’s deep love of cinema is palpable in nearly every frame, as is his commitment to authenticity.

So even if a Tavernier movie is a little less than hoped for (as is the case here), it's still worth watching a master at work.

Of monks, men and fateful choices

They're monks, but they often wear civilian clothing. If they don't talk about religion with the people whom they serve, perhaps it's because they're not seeking converts. Rather, they're trying to live their convictions. They help with medical treatment or offer the occasional bit of friendly conversation.

To support themselves, they sell honey in the village marketplace. They make sincere attempts to understand the spiritual lives of the Muslims whom they live amongst in Algeria's Atlas Mountains. They are Cistercian monks, yes, but they are also men, which means they have doubts -- not so much about their faith, but about the proper way to deal with the rising threat of violence from Islamist extremists.

Of Gods and Men, a movie from French director Xavier Beauvois, doesn't treat its band of monks as saints, but as people who've chosen to live in a certain way. Little about the film feels exalted or "spiritual," even though many sequences are punctuated by the monks at prayer.

It's just here that Beauvois makes his best decision: He's not pushing religious doctrine, but examining the ways in which men of faith deal with a crisis. When it becomes clear that the monks may be in grave danger, some of them talk of leaving Algeria. They want to help the villagers they've pledged to serve, but aren't particularly interested in becoming martyrs. Others feel that they have made a commitment, and must see it through. The movie takes place in 1996, a time when militant Islamist elements were insisting that foreigners leave the Algeria.

The personalities of the monks are not of primary importance. Christian (Lambert Wilson) guides the monks through their various decisions. Christian evidently was elected leader, but his views don't always please his comrades. Luc (Michael Lonsdale) -- who serves as the doctor -- also stands out among the monks: Luc has a sweet but never sappy demeanor. He's older, bearded and seems entirely at peace with the world and with the way he has chosen to live in it.

One of the movie's most beautiful scenes occurs toward the end when the monks gather for a meal, and listen to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. As they drink wine, they share a moment of brotherly love. Without saying anything, they seem to share an understanding: Events seldom lend themselves to easy comprehension. Still, they are bonded as brothers. I suppose you could say that scenes such as this are what critics mean when they talk about quietly moving drama.

Most of the villagers, like the monks, only want to get on with their lives. The extremists, who at one point murder a group of Croatian workers, don't care that the locals and this small group of French monks live in neighborly harmony. The motivations of the extremists are as political as they are religious.

Are the monks hopelessly naive? Maybe, but they're not portrayed as men whose intelligence has been consumed by the fires of faith. When the Algerian government offers to send soldiers to guard the tiny monastery, the monks decline. As westerners who've had enough of imperialist power relationships, they insist -- even at the cost of their lives -- on looking for an alternative response. Or maybe it's just this: Those who've opted for non-violence must accept the consequences of their decision.

Are these monks attempting to atone for the barbarisms of French colonialism? I'm not sure that Beauvois intends for the movie to go quite that far, but he invites us to think about such matters. Of Gods and Men -- bravely, I think -- shows us the uneasy relationship between deep faith and a turbulent world. Quite properly, it is movie more full of questions than answers, a sobering look at the struggles of conscience.