IS IT BOLLOCKS?

Film Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots.

THIS MONTH NAPOLEON

Q In Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, Josephine seduced Bonaparte with her ‘wares’, talking about her prodigious gifts. Did Josephine really chat about her lady garden with Boney?

In Scott’s film, Vanessa Kirby’s Josephine instructs Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) to look up her skirts between her legs when they meet. ‘If you look down you’ll see a surprise,’ she promises saucily. ‘Once you see it, you will always want it.’ Asurvivor of the Reign of Terror, scandalous socialite Marie Josèphe was pursued aggressively by Napoleon and he married her in 1796. The leader set off for war in Italy and sent letters to his wife from the front, referring fondly to her private parts as ‘the little black forest’ and writing that ‘to live in Josephine is to live in the Elysian fields’. Steady on, fella. The military leader also wrote of yearning to please his lover, hungering for ‘a kiss on your heart, and one much lower down. Much lower…’ Bonaparte also begged his missus not to bathe as he was intoxicated by her body odour, and penned booty-call letters to her: ‘How happy I would be if I could assist you at your undressing, the little firm white breast, the adorable face, the hair tied up in a scarf a la creole.’ His oversharing was used by the British for ridicule when Bonaparte’s fading feelings about Josephine as she cheated on him were written about in UK newspapers, but the leader remained enamoured – at his death on Saint Helena in 1821, long after the couple had divorced, the funny-hat wearer’s last word was allegedly ‘Josephine’.

VERDICT NOT BOLLOCKS

ON LOCATION

REEL SPOTS BEHIND THE CAMERA

WHAT? Heart of Stone’s Agent Stone (Gal Gadot) is at a glitzy ski hotel and travels to the bottom of the mountain via parachute and snow bike to circumnavigate an arms dealer. WHERE? Glacier Hotel Grawand, Alpin Arena Senales Ski Resort, Val Senales, Italy.

GO? The Grawand provides stunning views at 3,212 metres above sea level. Recommended to take their cable car to the valley bottom rather than slide it, though.

20TH CENTURY STUDIOS, SONY