Edmond Dantes (Pierre Niney) plans his revenge and crafts his disguise to become ‘The Count of Monte … [+]
Perhaps something magical happens when two Frenchmen adapt classics from their homeland. Some type of nationalistic alchemy ensues. Perhaps their desire to honor the work of their countryman and capture the essence of a literary masterpiece drives their filmmaking craft to new heights. Or maybe it’s just good old-fashioned serendipity that caused writer-directors Alexandre de La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte to make the best adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo to ever grace the silver screen. (The film hits theaters this Friday.)
Based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas that was published in serialized installments from 1844 to 1846, the film tells the tale of Edmond Dantes who’s falsely imprisoned on the day of his wedding for crimes he didn’t commit by three schemers with their own agendas for seeing Dantes disappear from the face of the Earth. While in his dungeon exile, Dantes meets a fellow prisoner who’s spent years trying to tunnel out of the Chateau d’If, a 19th century version of Alcatraz Island located off the coast of Marseilles.
The two men join forces to tunnel to the coastal wall of the prison. Years pass as Dantes digs and fantasizes about reeking his revenge on his trio of betrayers: his supposed best friend, a rival naval captain and the corrupt prosecutor who orchestrated his false imprisonment. He will emerge from captivity with a new identity and the means to destroy the ones who kept him from a life with his soulmate, Mercedes. Murder isn’t on his mind. His tormentors shall live solely to suffer at his hands.
Alexandre de La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte bring this epic story to stunning life on the big screen. From an opening scene on the high seas as a French merchant ship is aflame to a stag hunt on an aristocratic estate to a pistol duel at dawn, the writer-directors capture the scope and grandeur of Dumas’ story. As with any adaptation, they streamline the narrative and condense the storyline, but with no detrimental effects. (The original novel is over 1000 pages in its unabridged form.)
The cast is pitch perfect, and everyone knows their assignments. With a melodrama like this, you can go big with your performances, but the film never tips into camp. Pierre Niney (also marvelous in Francois Ozon’s 2016 film Frantz) anchors the film as Edmond Dantes with his youthful exuberance slowly giving way to an unyielding desire for revenge. By the end of the film, you’ve all but forgotten the happy-go-lucky young man the audience was introduced to in Act One. Niney has real chemistry with his screen soulmate, Mercedes Herrara (French actress Anais Demoustier), which gives this over-sized epic a grounding intimacy and characters the audience can invest in.
Alexandre de La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte have a grand sense of visual style that suits the scale of the story unfolding on screen. Tracking shots through vast mansions, majestic overhead shots of the stag hunt and water lapping at the camera lens as a French galley slowly sinks into the ocean serve to immerse the audience in the film’s 19th century European world. Undoubtedly some of the visuals are post-production digital wizardry, but its seamlessness is a credit to cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc and film editors Celia Lafitedupont and Sarah Ternat. The stag hunt sequence (though brief) is a jawdropper with overhead shots so organic they look like the helicopter of overheads of the 1970’s.
In 2023, the two writer-directors penned a two-part adaptation of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. (Both parts are currently streaming on HULU.) So, it’s no surprise that the real strength of The Count of Monte Cristo is its screenplay. Like the entire film, it’s grand without being pretentious. The dialogue feels like its of another time without being off-putting. It preserves a story that’s over eighty years old yet makes it as absorbing as any modern screenplay.
I’m putting de La Petelliere and Delaporte on my list of filmmakers to track. I look forward to whatever they do next. The Man in the Iron Mask, maybe? C’mon, guys. It’s right there waiting on you. It deserves a definitive version at your hands as well.
