A Little Chaos is an uneven but beautifully performed story of an independent, creative woman and the garden she dreamed up for a king.

| Oct 4, 2021

True French historians should simply relax and enjoy a film that takes us on a beautifully photographed cinematic romp into a past as it likely SHOULD have been.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 14, 2015

"A Little Chaos" wants us to be fascinated by a feminist who never was, then undermines her by casting an approving eye on the steamy affair she begins with her boss.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 1, 2015

It's difficult to conjure... excitement for a mess like "A Little Chaos," a lazy and off-puttingly anachronistic feminist fantasy about an 18th-century female landscape designer who finds love while creating... one of the grandest spaces in Versailles.

| Original Score: 30/100 | Jun 26, 2015

Mr. Rickman has found in the Sun King a character worthy of his imperious, reptilian charisma.

| Jun 25, 2015

The story comes to life only fitfully, even with - or perhaps because of - its court intrigue and supporting characters both hissable (Helen McCrory as Andr's wife) and flamboyant (Stanley Tucci as the king's bisexual brother).

| Jun 25, 2015

A very little chaos, and more's the pity.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 25, 2015

Winslet has ... powerful scenes, especially a visceral one near the end that dives into her harried history. It, however, is not enough to keep A Little Chaos in order.

| Jun 25, 2015

Oh, this one should have been a charmer.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 25, 2015

Engrossing and entertaining if sometimes trite and manipulative and totally bogus.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 25, 2015

Alan Rickman was born to play the Sun King -- or any king, really -- but neither he nor the blue-chip cast he's recruited in his capacity as director can rescue this muddled historical drama.

| Jun 25, 2015

It's a shame such a talented artist couldn't create a more memorable film, but the overlong "A Little Chaos" bogs down in a lackluster love story.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 25, 2015

This is a movie in which everything feels vaguely familiar.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 25, 2015

Alan Rickman's film is consistently, and often dispiritingly, mired in the quaint tradition of the classy costume drama.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 25, 2015

We get ready for the sparks to fly, but the scenes between Winslet and Schoenaerts fall flat. In fact, we pay more attention to the beautiful costumes and art direction than to any exchange between the two romantic leads.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 25, 2015

If Rickman, who co-wrote the film with Alison Deegan and Jeremy Brock, was beholden to no historical record, why didn't he come up with something more interesting than another tale of tentative courtship in the time of corsets?

| Original Score: C | Jun 25, 2015

What could be a look at artistic vision against brutal nature, or at least gender prejudice, never takes root.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 24, 2015

The film certainly doesn't lack for engaging talent - but none can save it from a fundamentally thin plot.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 24, 2015

While he shines in his supporting role as the satisfyingly complex king, it's hard not to imagine what the film would have looked like with Rickman as the romantic lead.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 24, 2015

Schoenaerts and his lack of bodice-busting tension with Winslet mirrors the film's transparent, often anachronistic inauthenticity: He's a modern Belgian using a regal British accent to play seventeenth-century French.

| Jun 23, 2015