A Little Chaos is a period drama directed by Alan Rickman and starring Kate Winslet as a woman charged to design and build a grand fountain garden for Louis XIV at Versailles. The film is, I noted from the poster, ‘the official film of RHS Gardening Week’, which may or may not be a hotly contested title, I just don’t know. All I can tell you is that it is, in fact, more of a love story than a horticultural story, and while it has occasional pleasing moments, and is lavishly costumed, it manages to do what I do whenever I try my hand at gardening. That is, despite my best intentions, and slogging my guts out, I somehow kill everything stone dead.
It opens with the King’s landscape architect, André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts) interviewing candidates to take on the fountain garden. Sabine De Barra (Winslet) is one such candidate, whom he first sees from his window, approaching the house, pausing by a circle of topiarised Buxus balls (is that what they’re called?), and pushing one pot slightly out of line. This, we understand, is the film setting out its stall. Here is a man who likes order and control. Here is a woman who is going to disturb that order, and bring ‘A Little Chaos’, and meddle with his balls, which he will not like, but then will like, which is the way these things tend to go at the movies.
He interviews her, studies her plans, questions her plans — ‘Are you a believer of order over landscape?’ — then dismisses her. She’s flunked it, she thinks. On her exit she throws her hat to the ground.
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