A very little chaos, and more's the pity. Kate Winslet stars in director Alan Rickman's story of a lady landscaper whose willingness to fiddle with man's imposition of order onto nature catches the eye of frustrated the Master Gardener tasked with giving the King of France a foretaste of heaven at Versailles. Why is he frustrated? Partly because if he messes up, he'll likely wind up as fertilizer; but mostly because his wife is a mean and faithless socialite. Widow Winslet has some romantic issues of her own, and so their budding romance — like the garden — sometimes seems doomed to wind up a mud-mired folly. Rickman the director keeps the action deliberate and composed and very rarely unexpected: a scene in which court ladies discuss their dead children provides a thrilling-but-rare departure from convention. Happily, Rickman the actor steals the show as a king reluctantly confronting his legacy — that is, what happens after His Majesty has ceased to bloom. (2015) — Matthew Lickona
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