Netflix: “The Empress”
By the middle of the 19th century, the 600-year-old Habsburg dynasty ruled an area of 676,615 kilometers in which 51.4 million people lived. This made it the third most populous monarchy in Europe after the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom.
The ravishing new series “The Empress” is concerned with just two of these people: the young Emperor Franz Joseph (Philippe Froissant) and his Bavarian wife, Empress Elisabeth (Devrim Lingnau), in the 1850s. And we should be grateful to Netflix because they’ve managed to make the stodgy Habsburgs downright sexy.
FJ has matinee-idol looks (imagine a young Ryan O’Neal) but he needs a wife to produce an heir and perpetuate the dynasty. His domineering mother, Prince Sophie (Melika Foroutan) sets her sights on Helene (Elisa Schlott), a distant cousin from Bavaria, and arranges for a meeting at Schoenbrunn. Helene’s family accompanies her but once they meet, FJ unexpectedly hits it off with the informal, wild-natured younger sister, “Sisi” (aka Elisabeth, played by Devrim Lingnau). Within weeks, a royal marriage between TJ and Sisi is arranged, much to the disapproval of both mothers who’d hoped for a different outcome.
Their fears are well-founded: now that Sisi has become the Empress of Austria, she must buckle down and obey the uber-strict protocols of the Habsburg court, something she is loath to do. Why on Earth must she sit by passively and embroider, when she prefers to ride horses and attend all-night parties thrown by FJ’s cunning, handsome younger brother Prince Maximilian (Johannes Nussbaum who looks like a young Billy Idol.) What’s more, her liberal proclivities and sympathy for the poor make her the “people’s princess,” not unlike the late great Princess Diana in our own time.
So what makes TE so irresistible? The chemistry between Elisabeth (Lingnau, a young Turkish-German actress, is a ringer for American actress Jennifer Lawrence) and the storybook-handsome Emperor, who loves his eccentric wife despite all the uproar she causes. The intense flirting that goes on between Elisabeth and the rakish Maximilian (who has an agenda of his own, it turns out). The political infighting between the ladies-in-waiting, one of whom (Almila Bagriacik) happens to be an anarchist waiting for the right moment to strike her down. And finally, the behavior of Princess Sophie, who has a well-kept romantic secret of her own.
The exteriors are stunning (many scenes are shot at Schonbrunn), the interiors are breathtaking, the acting is superb, and best of all, the story for the most part is true. So go ahead and indulge in “The Empress”! Your anti-monarchist sensibilities can wait until later.