Lady Oscar (film)

Lady Oscar (Japanese: ベルサイユのばら Hepburn: Berusaiyu no bara, "The Rose of Versailles") is a 1979 English-language romantic period drama film, based on the manga The Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda. The film was written and directed by Jacques Demy, with music composed by his regular collaborator Michel Legrand. The Japanese-French co-production was produced by Mataichiro Yamamoto for Kitty Films, Nippon TV, Toho, and Ciné Tamaris, and was filmed on location in France.

Catriona MacColl stars as the eponymous Oscar François de Jarjayes, with Barry Stokes as her lover André Grandier, alongside Jonas Bergström, Christine Böhm, Mark Kingston, Georges Wilson, Sue Lloyd, Martin Potter, and Anouska Hempel. A young Lambert Wilson appears in a minor role.

Plot
General Jarjayes' wife dies while giving birth to a baby girl. Frustrated by this and refusing to believe his wife would die without giving him a male heir, the General names the girl Oscar François de Jarjayes and decides to raise her as a boy. He tells his housekeeper that her son, André, will grow up with Oscar and become her best friend, as the General believes the girl should be around men. As the years go by, the two children grow up to be inseparable friends, while Oscar learns to sword-fight and behaves like a boy. Despite belonging to a different social strata from Oscar, André starts developing romantic feelings for her. However, she does not feel the same way about him and only loves him as a brother.

The Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, like many within the aristocracy, is fascinated by Oscar and eventually decides to give her an honored position as a personal guard. The Queen, a vain ruler who does not care about the terrible conditions in which the commoners of France live, is unsatisfied with her arranged marriage to the King and does not love him. She decides to have a lover, aristocrat Hans Axel Von Fersen. This secret eventually becomes public knowledge and becomes further proof of the Crown's hypocrisy. The people of France get angrier and their hunger for Revolution gets even stronger.

André, now a common stable boy in Paris, lives away from Versailles and the aristocracy and thus is more aware of the plight of the poor. He believes a revolution is needed for all citizens to live as equals and tries to show Oscar, who lives a more secluded and ostentatious life, his point of view. Despite recognizing the difficult situation outside of the castle's walls, Oscar remains loyal to the Crown and starts developing feelings for Fersen.

At a masked ball, André reveals to Oscar that he is in love with her and even tries to kiss her. Shocked by this, Oscar does not correspond his feelings for her. Despite this, the two remain friends.

In 1778, when the French Revolution begins, Oscar receives orders to shoot on the protestors outside Versailles. She and other guards refuse to do this and get sent to jail. Moved by this, André and other revolutionaries free them before their execution. Oscar declares her love for André, and the two begin a relationship. She tries to convince her father to join their side before things get worse for the upper class, but the General refuses and even tries to kill her. In the ensuing sword fight, André defends Oscar, and the two escape the house unscathed. During the taking of the Bastille, however, André dies, leaving Oscar to look for his body among all the commotion.

Production
The major sponsor of the film was Shiseido, a cosmetics company, and Catriona McColl promoted a red lipstick for the spring cosmetic line that year. Frederik L. Schodt and Jared Cook translated the entire manga series into English as a reference for the producers of this film, but gave the only copy of the translation to them and it was lost.

The production was based at Auditel Studios in Paris, with filming locations including Jossigny, Senlis, and the Palace of Versailles.

Reception
The film was not a commercial success, and Catriona MacColl's portrayal of Oscar, in particular, was criticized. Conversely, Variety described the film as recalling early Hollywood epics, and praised McColl's depiction of Oscar as a "woman waiting to burst out of a man's clothing".

Kevin Thomas, writing for the Los Angeles Times, described the film as a typical Jacques Demy film, noting its preoccupation with contrasting the lives of the aristocrats and the lives of the poor. Anne Duggan took a similar view when situating Lady Oscar within the context of Demy's other films. Duggan describes Ikeda's Oscar as having "more self-knowledge" in some respects than the Oscar of the film, who therefore has arguably less agency, whereas "Demy goes further than Ikeda in challenging the tradition of the maiden warrior by questioning the implicit class prejudices underlying the order that upholds forms of aristocratic heroism".