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First released in France in 2009 for F2, TV5, and Jimmy, Ciné Cinéma, the two-part series—95 minutes each part—premiered on July 20, 2021, with English subtitles, on MHZ, a streaming service for foreign and international content. Lorànt Deutsch plays a shrewd but vulnerable Fouquet, Thierry Frémont depicts a power-lunging Colbert, and Sara Giraudeau is the smart and playful, turning heartbroken Marie-Madeline Fouquet.
It also helps that the picture is a musical. When Chu isn’t moving his cast from one beautifully dressed location to another, he is guiding it through some of the most eyepopping musical numbers to hit the screen in years. The splashy (literally) presentation of the tune “96,000” uses Highbridge Pool to great creative effect, with water becoming part of the choreography. This number is so intense that one might draw comparisons to the beautiful traffic jam dance sequence in La La Land.
Overall, the pacing of the movie is pretty slow. However, there are scenes in the last part of the movie that make whole experience worth it. It’s those scenes that show Cross’s range as an actor and drive home the meaning of the film. The story is even more interesting when you consider that it all actually happened to the real-life Robert Pyle. Even though it’s a slow burn, I would still recommend The Dark Divide.
It’s worth mentioning some of the historical accounts given, which comprise the heartbeat of the film. There was no doubt that early oppression from 1501 to 1865 was by design, with slaves reduced to generational property and 4-year-old children working alongside their elders in the fields. The figures are staggering with slave labor worth 3.5 billion, more than railroad and manufacturing profits combined.
Stone and Thompson are great talents when they have solid material to work with, but Cruella never finds sound footing. The allure of a classic-villain backstory is – presumably – to show fans how the person they’ve despised for all these years became so despicable. Questions abound. Were they born the epitome of evil, like Damien in The Omen, or were they overcome by all-consuming power, like young Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise? The answers to such questions are often ridiculously satisfying. The problem, of course, is that they can also be frustrating, especially when -- as happens in Cruella -- the filmmakers don’t pay proper homage to story canon.
The movie splashes memories into the present to illustrate the stickiness of the past. The technique of intercutting past and present is risky, and it can easily feel contrived and ham-fisted. But here, thanks in part to the stellar editing of Ronald Sanders (David Cronenberg’s editor), the technique enhances the story Mortensen’s getting at. (Cronenberg, a friend and past collaborator of Mortensen’s, has a welcome, winking cameo as a proctologist.)
Helms portrays a man we can't help but cringe at as he bumbles toasts, telling his family about his plans, or being a supportive partner. He also invests seemingly trivial decisions, like the color of the nursery, with outsize importance. Much like another alumnus of The Office, Steve Carell in The Big Short or Foxcatcher, Helms provides evidence that he's ready for roles that are more than just cheap laughs.
It’s worth mentioning that Six Minutes to Midnight (a rather outdated reference to the Doomsday Clock, if today’s moviegoers even know what that is) has a few unintentional laughs. It’s tough not to giggle when Jim Broadbent, when threatened with being scalded by the contents of a squealing tea kettle, says, with the kind of conviction that only a master craftsman can muster, “I’m not a bloody traitor. He’s half German, half English. I helped the English half of ‘im.”