I just finished watching the 2025 animated film The Rose of Versailles on Netflix, and I’ve rarely felt so simultaneously impressed and mildly frustrated. This movie is like ordering a seven-layer cake and only getting to eat four layers before someone whisks it away. It's rich, it's extravagant, it’s beautifully crafted—but it's also hurried, shallow in parts, and sometimes feels like it’s trying to host a royal ball on a half-hour lunch break.
The animation is glorious. Truly. The studio, clearly armed with both budget and ambition, throws you headfirst into the satin-drenched, gold-leafed chaos of 18th-century France. There’s not a single frame that looks rushed or bland. Everything gleams—from Marie Antoinette’s bouffant towers of hair to the polished floors of Versailles. The camera lingers on gowns, glides down corridors, and catches candlelight just right. Even if you zone out during the political stuff (don’t worry, it happens), your eyes will stay glued to the screen. You could mute the film and still have a decent time just staring at the opulence.
The voice acting is top-notch. Oscar, the main character and gender-defying royal guard is voiced with such elegant control that you immediately understand her constant balancing act between her noble upbringing, military duty, and very human emotions. Marie Antoinette is more than just a pretty dress—there’s a gentleness to her, a kind of sweet, reckless optimism that makes her fall from grace feel personal. André, Oscar’s best friend, and long-suffering love interest, is a brooding but sincere presence. Fersen is… well, Fersen is handsome and conflicted, and that’s about all the film has time to give him.
Oscar’s story is the heart of the film. A woman raised as a man to command the royal guard, she’s constantly shifting between roles, loyalties, and emotions. She’s a fascinating character—cool in a duel, confused in love, and noble even when she starts questioning the entire idea of nobility. Her journey from palace defender to revolutionary is compelling, and the film never makes a spectacle of her identity. It just lets her exist in this strange space between tradition and transformation. You root for her, even when the film barely gives her space to breathe between plot points.
Now, here’s where I start grumbling. The pacing. Oh boy. If this film were a carriage, it’d be pulled by a team of horses sprinting at full gallop, with no concern for bumps in the road. Trying to fit a 10-volume manga into two hours is like trying to squeeze an entire French banquet into a snack box. Sure, all the courses are technically there, but you only get a bite of each. The early parts of the film set the stage well—Marie Antoinette’s arrival in France, the rigid royal court, and Oscar’s initial admiration for her queen. But then the film starts skipping through major historical events like its speed-reading Wikipedia. The revolution creeps up, then explodes, then resolves, all in what feels like ten minutes.
Some emotional beats are just... missing. You can sense that there’s depth in these relationships—Oscar and André, Oscar and Marie, Oscar and Fersen—but the film barely dips below the surface. André, in particular, gets the short end of the script. He’s been in love with Oscar forever, suffers quietly, and supports her endlessly—but he doesn't get the screen time to let us feel it. When things finally come to a head between them, it’s touching, sure, but it’s also a little like opening a novel to the last chapter and pretending you read the rest.
Marie Antoinette’s arc suffers from the same issue. We see her as young, bubbly, easily swayed by shiny things and even shinier people, but the movie doesn’t spend enough time with her descent into unpopularity or her struggle to reclaim some dignity in the chaos. The political drama—peasants rioting, the court unraveling, the tension on the streets—mostly serves as a glittering backdrop rather than an immersive conflict. The movie wants us to care, and we do, but more out of instinct than investment.
That said, the music does a lot of heavy lifting. The orchestral score is lush and sweeping, helping to plug some of the emotional holes the script rushes over. There’s a main theme that plays whenever Oscar has a particularly conflicted moment, and it’s both stirring and subtle. You get the sense the composer was trying to do what the writers didn’t have time for—give the story some emotional weight.
Despite its flaws, I found myself genuinely enjoying the experience. It's not perfect, and at times it’s frustrating, but it’s undeniably beautiful, earnest, and unlike anything else in the current animation landscape. It’s rare to see a historical epic told through such a lavishly animated lens, especially one that centers on a female lead who’s not defined by romance or tragedy alone. Oscar feels like a classic hero in a powdered wig and breastplate, caught in a moment too big for any one person to carry.
So no, it doesn’t fully do justice to its legendary source material, but it also doesn’t try to be something it’s not. It’s a lavish, slightly messy, emotionally sincere waltz through a gilded age collapsing under its own weight. The Rose of Versailles isn’t perfect, but like its heroine, it’s brave, a little reckless, and impossible not to admire.
Final Score- [5.5/10]
Reviewed by - Anjali Sharma
Follow @AnjaliS54769166 on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times