That Night in Varennes (La Nuit de Varennes in French) is a 1982 film from France directed by Ettore Scola.
Paris, 1791. The French Revolution is well underway, as revolutionary fervor and anger towards the aristocracy continues to build. Eventually, the King and Queen of France, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, attempt to escape, traveling incognito in a carriage, hoping to reach the border with Austria where the king could join loyalist troops...
However, this film does not follow the royal party, but instead another group of travelers, trailing behind on the same road. The eclectic mix includes:
- Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, a left-wing writer who was better known as a writer of hardcore pornography, who wrote a whole book about his foot fetish and indeed coined the word "pornographer"
- Giacomo Casanova (Marcello Mastroianni), yes, The Casanova, the famous lover, but now a tired old man in his mid-60s
- Thomas Paine (Harvey Keitel), the American revolutionary, who with The American Revolution now completed (and not having gone far enough for Paine's tastes) has come to France to be part of another revolution
- Countess Sophie de la Borde (Hanna Schygulla) a lady-in-waiting to the queen, and the only fictional one of the four main characters
Rumors abound, and Restif guesses what is going on, with Sophie admitting that the royal family is ahead of them on the road. The carriage is overtaken by riders seeking to arrest the king and queen. Meanwhile, all the passengers on the trailing coach trundle along, talking about the direction of events and what they mean for France.
Jean-Louis Trintignant pops up briefly near the end as M. Sauce, the innkeeper who temporarily takes custody of the royal family, and Michel Piccoli is seen even more briefly as King Louis XVI.
Tropes:
- And Starring: In the end credits Jean-Louis Trintignant gets a special credit, "nos plus vifs remerciements"—"our deepest thanks"—for his appearance as M. Sauce.
- Artistic License – History:
- Obviously there's no evidence that any of the three actual historical characters involved even met, much less rode in a coach together. And specifically, in Real Life Tom Paine did not speak French, which posed a problem when he came to Paris to get involved in the French Revolution.
- Marie-Antoinette died at age 37. She's played by then-62/63 Swiss actress Éléonore Hirt.
- As You Know: Some carnival people are giving a puppet show by the river. The barker feels compelled to say "Something important happened two years ago: 1789" (he's talking about the fall of the Bastille).
- Book Ends: The film begins with some circus people giving a sort of puppet show with cutout drawings, recounting the fall of the Bastille in 1789. It ends with the same circus people at the same spot, giving another puppet show recounting how King Louis was beheaded.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The film stops to break the fourth wall on multiple occasions. A couple of times the film pauses for a narrator to explain historical points, like when a reference to King Louis at Cherbourg cuts to a narrator explaining how Louis inaugurated the fortress at Cherbourg in 1786. A couple of times, characters address the camera directly. Casanova goes by an alias and is not recognized, cutting to a scene where he talks directly to the camera about how not many people in France know him, and how he'll die seven years after the events of this film in 1798. Finally the film ends with Restif addressing the camera, talking about how he imagined going 200 years in the future and how in 1992 some people thought the revolutionaries were savage and inhuman, while the radicals still thought the revolutionaries did the right thing—and then he walks up some stairs from the riverbank and finds himself in 1983 Paris with the streets choked with cars.
- Call-Back: Countess Sophie tells a story of how she accompanied the king for the inauguration of the fort at Cherbourg in 1786. She reminisces fondly about how the king wore all his finery, topped off by a scarlet cloak, and how grand and magnificent he looked. At the end of the film she finally opens the package she's been carrying, and it's that same royal wardrobe, complete with scarlet cloak, which Louis would have worn the very next day to inspect his loyal troops.
- The Casanova: It's him! Casanova's old life as a seducer is a topic of discussion but now he's 66 years old and obviously feeling his age. Pretty Adelaide who looks to be half his age explicitly invites Casanova to her place for sexy good times, but he ruefully says that those days are behind him.
- The Cassandra: Restif observes that the French aristocracy is getting what it deserves, and recalls how he himself wrote back in the mid-1780s that the common people were angry and were going to rise up if the government did nothing to help them.
- Death Glare: Countess Sophie naively believes that the common people of France still love the king and look up to him as their "good father". So she's startled, when staying overnight at an inn, to see a whole crowd of peasant folks staring with murder in their eyes at her and Mr. Jacob, aristocrats in fancy dress.
- Even the Guys Want Him: Mr. Jacob, the gay courtier who is traveling along with Sophie, tells Casanova directly that he, Jacob, thinks Casanova is still handsome and wishes they could have met years ago. Casanova tells Mr. Jacob that back in the day, he never passed up a chance at pleasure, and then gives Jacob a sensual kiss on the lips. (The real Casanova's memoirs hint at affairs with men as well as women.)
- Fanservice Extra: All the topless and naked High Class Call Girls at the brothel that Restif visits.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: A peasant at an inn tries to rape Sophie. The camera gets a closeup of his mouth, with some teeth missing and all the others yellow.
- Historical Domain Character: Three of the four main characters (all but Countess Sophie), and several of the people involved in the capture of the king and queen like M. and Mme. Sauce, as well as (obviously) Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
- Invisible President: King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette are seen only briefly, and only from the waist down, in a scene where Tom Paine and Countess Sophie peer from the stairs down below through the doorway to the royal family's room.
- Lascivious Beauty Mark: Casanova may be an old man well past his glory days as a seducer, but he's still painting a beauty spot on his cheek. The whole scene, in which he's touching up his makeup and adjusting the old-timey wig that hides his balding head, emphasizes his vanity.
- Little People Are Surreal: A little person is the carnival barker for the puppet show in the opening scene.
- Match Cut: Sophie walks away from Paine after a nasty argument at an inn, followed by a match cut to Restif walking over to Casanova for a chat.
- Miss Kitty: Faustine, the madam at the brothel that Restif briefly visits early in the film. She fondly remembers their past as lovers.
- Parental Incest: Maybe it isn't surprising that Restif the old pervert is engaged in a sexual relationship with his daughter Agnes, but it's a little more surprising that Agnes is perfectly OK with it, giving her father a passionate kiss before letting him suck on her breast for a while. (It's also worth noting here that throughout the rest of the movie, Restif is shown as a genial, friendly, and perceptive old man, the bit about engaging in incest with his daughter being a random aside.)
- Same Language Dub: Harvey Keitel's entire performance was dubbed by a French actor.
- Sidelong Glance Biopic: Sort of—the film isn't a biopic, but the story of the flight of the royal family and their capture at Varennes is told not from the perspective of the king and queen, but from that of a carriage full of people traveling behind them on the same road.
- Surprise Incest: Restif in one of his dirty books tells a story of having sex with a High-Class Call Girl and only finding out afterwards that she was his daughter. Of course, since he's actively engaged in an incestuous relationship with a different daughter, he probably wasn't bothered.
- Torches and Pitchforks: Played straight, as a mob bearing torches and pitchforks marches to Varennes after hearing the news that the king and queen have been captured there. The next morning they force the immediate return of the royal party to Paris.
- Weapon for Intimidation: The commander of the republican guardsmen that arrested the king and queen relates that he intimidated the royal party into surrendering by pointing unloaded guns at them. (This happened in Real Life.)
