Etherial French beauty Melanie Thierry stars in Bertrand Tavernier’s new Renaissance drama

Thierry lights up Tavernier’s Renaissance drama

CANNES, France — Melanie Thierry may look like she just stepped out of a Renaissance painting, but 16th century parlance didn’t come naturally to the French actress.

Thierry, a blonde with wide-set clear blue eyes, plays the title role in “The Princess of Montpensier,” about a love triangle set in 1562 France. The movie, by “In the Electric Mist” director Bertrand Tavernier, screened Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival.

Thierry plays Marie de Montpensier, a young noblewoman determined to pursue her romance with her childhood sweetheart — played by “A Very Long Engagement” star Gaspard Ulliel — even after her scheming father marries her off to someone else for political reasons.

“At the beginning, I was a little scared,” Thierry said at a news conference. “When I read the script, I said to myself ‘Oh God, I will never make it, (the language) is much too complicated.’”

“But it’s so clear when you say it and so beautiful and so pure … that once you master it, it becomes a real pleasure to act,” said the 28-year-old actress, who’s among the leading lights of the new generation of young French actresses.

“The Princess of Montpensier” is based on a 1662 novel of the same name by Madame de La Fayette — required reading at many schools in France.

“When I read the book, I saw in it the possibility of making a really touching movie about love out of it,” said Tavernier, adding that the characters’ complexity and his own ignorance about the tumultuous period during which the story is set also caught his attention.

It takes place during the bloody wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants that raged for nearly four decades.

“Each and every film I’ve made I made because I wanted to learn something,” said Tavernier, who has made many period movies over his nearly half-century-long career.

“The Princess of Montpensier” is his fourth film in the running for the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the French Riviera festival’s top prize.

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