LOS ANGELES – Many will have heard of The Three Musketeers, the swashbuckling French historical novel by Alexandre Dumas, in part because of the many screen adaptations.

Less known is the female spy in the story, Milady de Winter, the titular heroes’ beautiful and cunning antagonist.

But she takes centre stage in a French film based on the 1844 classic, The Three Musketeers: Milady. It opens in Singapore cinemas on Dec 21 and stars French actress and former Bond girl Eva Green.

And the 43-year-old tells The Straits Times her character fights a bit like the heroine in a Chinese martial arts movie, something the star loved training for.

The film is the second chapter in a two-part saga that began with The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan, which screened in November.

And it features the same all-star French cast, including actors Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris and Pio Marmai as the three musketeers – elite soldiers tasked with serving and protecting the king – and Francois Civil as D’Artagnan, the young man who joins them.

Milady (Green) is a central figure in the story – an international woman of intrigue who can fight and ride a horse as well as any man and also seduce, disguise herself and speak multiple languages.

In this film, as the three musketeers fight a war that threatens to tear France apart, D’Artagnan finds himself reluctantly joining forces with Green in order to save the woman he loves, Constance (Lyna Khoudri).

In a Zoom interview, Green says it was a thrill to bring Milady to life.

“She’s a chameleon, she adapts depending on whom she is dealing with. And as an actor, it was just fun to play.”

“And in this second part, you discover what is haunting her – her demons, her wounds. That was something we’d never seen in other versions,” says the actress, who has made a name for herself portraying femme fatales in Bond movie Casino Royale (2006), fantasy film Dark Shadows (2012) and crime actioner Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (2014).

Milady is also one, “in the sense that she seduces and she can kill to get what she wants – and there’s no remorse at all when she does that”, Green says.

“But if she was going to be evil just for the sake of it, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much.”

The character also feels quite modern despite the 17th-century setting.

“There’s something very free about her. She’s very much ahead of her time, quite feminist, and not afraid of anything.

“There’s something even manly about her. She’s alone and doesn’t care about conventions,” says Green, who earned a Best Actress nomination at the Cesars – the French equivalent of the Oscars – for her role as an astronaut in the drama Proxima (2019).

Written and directed by French film-maker Martin Bourboulon, The Three Musketeers films also add depth to the central male characters.

Green says: “There have been so many adaptations, and these musketeers have beautiful values – honour, courage, friendship – and they’re real heroes.

“But there’s something more human about everybody in this version. The musketeers are more real. They have a beating heart rather than just being big strong men who fight.”

And the women, she adds, “are not just there in beautiful dresses”.

Milady has several memorable fight scenes, and Green trained with a stunt crew for months to learn sword-fighting as well as martial arts like aikido.

“We were trying to find something particular about Milady – she fights with two weapons and there’s something a bit Asian about it.

“I was obsessed with that. I think it looks so cool,” Green says, adding that she is a big fan of Chinese martial arts films such as Hero (2002), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and House Of Flying Daggers (2004).

“There’s something very graceful, strong and feminine about it. And visually, it’s always interesting.”

It was a steep learning curve to perfect those moves, but Green embraced the challenge.

“You have to accept that at the beginning, you’re going to be really bad, and at the end, you surprise yourself.”

• The Three Musketeers: Milady opens in cinemas on Dec 21.