chivalric

Today, some defunct European dynasties maintain their chivalric orders as a lingering vestige of the power they once held.

While chivalric honor may have been real for some knights, the allure of fame and wealth, or the simple rush of reckless adrenaline, was sometimes too great.

Creton, a veteran director working at the margins of France’s film industry, looks to the divine powers and chivalric codes that fuel swords-and-shields epics like “Game of Thrones,” but whittles these elements down to a mysterious essence.

Throwing a theatrical fit about the propriety of inspecting women’s quarters in light of European chivalric ideals is, after all, what enabled Toranaga to escape Ishido’s clutches while wearing his wife’s clothes.

We quickly sense that director Bourboulon is keen on divorcing us from any cliched image of Dumas’ chivalric romantics as foppish and suave, delivering instead a band of scruffy, rock-and-roll combatants who suggest American West outlaws more than they do a clique born of landed Gallic nobility.