An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was featuring Johnny Depp’s come-back, I still wanted to check it out. Well, it was really some stunt casting choosing the famous US actor to play the French king Louis XV and I think it paid off fairly well. From a marketing point of view, it was certainly a smart move and, on top of that, his larger-than-life personality was perfect to play a king who was supposed to stand out from everybody else. Finally, Depp did deliver a solid performance (his French was not flawless but good enough) but, unfortunately, he wasn’t given much to do after all. Indeed, even though the focus was put on casting Depp (he was also displayed prominently on the poster), the title and the movie itself was actually not about the king himself, but his last mistress, an actual real person as it turned out to be. Maïwenn was apparently fascinated by this woman and basically turned the whole thing into one of the most misguided ego-trip I have seen in a while. Sure, the whole thing (Versailles, the costumes,…) looked quite impressive and it was apparently one of the most expensive French movies released in 2023. However, Maïwenn not only did produce, write and direct the damned thing, she also decided that she should play the lead but, at 45 years old, nobody had apparently the guts to tell her that she was actually too old. On top of that, beside her age, I never thought she was convincing as some supposedly irresistible femme fatale. Furthermore, in our post #Metoo world, I thought it was rather dubious how she seemed to argue that there is so much empowerment for a woman to give her body to so many men. If Jeanne du Barry indeed did have sex with so many guys, it was in order to survive and there was actually nothing really empowering about it. Maïwenn was apparently inspired by ‘Barry Lyndon’ which was a great reference point but she completely failed to bring any ambiguity to her character. Finally, her infatuation towards the whole French royal family (especially the King, his son and Marie-Antoinette) seemed also weird and misguided considering that their decadent life style and incompetent rule would be one of the main catalysator for one of the most famous revolutions which would take place only a few decades later. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it’s worth a look because you don’t get to see Johnny Freaking Depp playing a French king so often.