One of the truisms that the fans of La Antigua's alleged rapist Diego Ariel Stella keep pumping at us is that 'every story has at least two versions'. Here we have three. (Rashōmon had four.)
It is the 29th of December 1386 and two men fight to the death to establish the truth. The wife of one has accused the other of rape. If her husband prevails she will be seen to be an innocent victim, if he falls, she will burn and their child, whose paternity is also somewhat up in the air, will become an orphan.
We are given the backdrop to this duel (Ridley Scott has some notable previous with the subject matter) firstly from the perspective of the Norman knight Jean de Carrouges. His truth is followed by that of his long-standing frenemy Jacques Le Gris and then that of Marguerite de Carrouges; the truth. These are an odd hybrid between showings and tellings.
If you come to this wanting in the main an illuminating take on some of our modern world's biggest issues — a medieval #metoo parable — then you may end up less than fully satisfied, and although as a student of the period there was more in it for me than most, I think I can honestly say that there is a lot more in it.
Early critical appraisals at Venice were lukewarm, perhaps because one might descry too much maleness in the tale relative to Jodie Comer's final third, overseen by Nicole Holofcener.
Yet over-dominant men who think the whole thing is very much about them — more generally concerned with the big death than the little one — is a large part of what the film itself is about. And it is not a bad thing that Affleck and Damon's screenplay takes the time to make its central male characters interesting, the two duellists, like the lady whose testimony has set up the fight, have made compromises in order to survive in this complex feudal world and none of them is entirely secure within it.
In spite of his excellent cape-work Adam Driver's Jacques Le Gris is not a boo-hiss pantomime villain. He is as grey as his name suggests. His vision of the rape has the mufflers on compared to Maguerite's, but the really damning part of the central section is an exchange between Jacques and his 'boss' Pierre in which the former reports how Maguerite had made all the necessary protestations one would expect of a lady of her class who knows how the game was played.
But Pierre doesn't much care for the wriggle room for vulgar interpretation this self-exculpating interpretation implies. "Deny, deny, deny..."
The Last Duel is evidently aware that it carries a modern message, yet also knows that it is underpinned by 'true events' and does not simply use the feudal society of fourteenth century France as a one dimensional backdrop for delivering a sermon. Sexual politics are a chunk of its thematic payload, but so too are inter-masculine struggles and the wider social dynamics of what historians tend to agree was the worst century within an already dubious series. Perhaps not unsurprisingly it is not an epoch Hollywood has previously paid much attention to.
We are reminded how the Black Death in the middle of it has upset the social and economic order. At the time Richard II was on the throne of England and his peasants were revolting. (And I find it telling that when they rose up the first group they vented their rage against were not landlords, but lawyers.)
If there is anything 'Pythonesque' about the production — one of Mark Kermode's charges — it lies in a depiction of the obvious disconnect between the courtly ideal and the courtly reality, something the late Terry Jones picked up in his exegesis of The Knight's Tale by Chaucer, in which he concluded that the narrator, in spite of all his high chivalric self-branding, was little more than a brutish mercenary.
Very much in that mould is Damon's chippy and maladroit Jean de Carrouges, a sort of French ultra with a mullet whose competence doesn't extend far beyond roughing up the rosbifs and even then his decision-making is decidedly ropey. His wife is left vulnerable (his property rights subjected to carnal abuse) largely because he needs to ride to Paris to collect payment in coin for a mismanaged campaign in Scotland, when he really should have been attending to his affairs at home.
One slightly jarring yet nevertheless enjoyable presence is that of a blond Ben Affleck as Pierre d'Alençon, a delectable character seemingly straight out of GOT, but given his clear and obvious Frenchness, perhaps his thing for wine, women and dodgy sartorial decisions is not so anachronistic after all.
His delivery of a single, rather anglo-saxone expletive around the mid-point of the film proved to be one of its high points.
Maguerite may only have one of three different stories but hers is the conclusive one, because it is the way we see her operating outside of any victimhood that definitively shows up the men around her.
Under interrogation clerical lawyers suggest to her that she may have dreamed or even desired the incident* and still they cannot quite get their heads around the idea that she would expose herself to so much scrutiny and personal risk...for a lie.
çConfirmation that Jodie Comer is now a proper alpha female star and that she is the only actress I could currently consider to play Lady Brett Ashley. She now rejoins Ridley Scott (and Joaquin Phoenix) as Empress Joséphine in the upcoming Napoleon biopic that already feels un-missable.
* Though nothing quite as gruesome as our local Tia Tomasa Licda Claudia Paniagua's query in the Diego Stella case: ‘¿Qué mujer que se pone en cuatro no está pidiendo ser penetrada?’
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