The Proud Charm of Favoritism – Weekend
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French Maiwenn’s Jeanne Dubarry is in theaters, a costume drama that opened this year’s Cannes Film Festival, a two-hour and disconcertingly old-fashioned love story between King Louis XV and his mistress Jeanne.
A young illegitimate girl living in France in the 18th century does not have many opportunities to arrange her destiny. The clever beauty Jeanne de Vaubernier is expelled from the monastery, so she has only one road – to the panel. She goes to Paris, finds patrons for herself and gets to the bed of the king himself. To be able to be close to the king, she needs to quickly become a noblewoman – she marries the Count Dubarry and becomes the official mistress of Louis XV. And it turns out to be freer than all those who surround the king. He does what he wants, constantly stirs up the court swamp, takes too loose with the rules and terribly annoys the royal daughters. Then the king dies. And then the old regime dies. Jeanne will end her days on the scaffold, but we will learn about this from the off-screen text. Death is not the most important part of her life.
Maiwenn’s Jeanne DuBarry may seem like a film about scandal, social differences, rules and those who don’t want to abide by them—but the actress and director Maiwenn only shot about love. A costume drama about the love of a prostitute who freely and with pleasure entrusts her body to various, often elderly, men, and the king – who can give his mistress a small residence, but cannot make his own daughters stop spying on his mistress. An archaic, dusty story where two people look at each other to endless music, and the rest of them either hinder or help.
Maiwenn plays Jeanne, she is infinitely charming in this role – as in all her roles, from Diva Plavalaguna in Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element to Alex in Alexander Azh’s Bloody Harvest. And endlessly old fashioned. Maiwenn is considered an opponent of the #MeToo movement, having married Luc Besson at 15 and having a daughter from him at 16, she recently publicly spat at a journalist who was investigating Besson’s sexual harassment case. Filming a love story, she behaves in much the same way as Jeanne Dubarry behaved at court: she refuses to follow the rules, refuses to sympathize with a woman, refuses to sympathize with a man.
Her film My King (2015) was about living with a narcissist, DNA (2020) was about living in a large and unpredictable family; in her new film Maiwenn explains how difficult it is for a woman to fit into the life of her lover, to dissolve in him. And how fun it is. During the gynecological examination necessary to allow Jeanne to the royal bed, she needs an interpreter: she is unable to understand what the old doctor wants from her with questions like “do you feel itching during urination.” She unsophisticatedly informs him: “Every day I smear my … my bosom with aromatic oils.” Jeanne Dubarry is the story of a woman who learns to say the word “bosom”.
After the first night spent with the king, Jeanne is awakened early and sent to a special room where she can see the king’s morning awakening ceremony, but no one sees her herself. This pompous, funny and meaningless performance – a morning toilet, at which courtiers, servants, a doctor, family members are present – admires Jeanne. She is the main, privileged spectator, she has special rights: she is simultaneously present at this ceremony and does not obey the general rules. The whole film is her journey from viewer to participant, from a person who wants to blow up the system to a person who dreams of becoming part of this mechanism. And eventually it becomes.
The film sometimes drifts towards the comedy of “Pretty Woman”, especially in the episodes where Jeanne is taught the rules of high society, then parodically retells “Cinderella” with evil princesses and a poor hard-working Cinderella at someone else’s ball. Sometimes Maiwenn gets into a direct argument with Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, where Asia Argento played Jeanne the Simple, Jeanne the Fool. Maiwenn does not consider Jeanne a fool: she sees before her just a woman in love.
But the main engine of the plot is the undisguised pleasure of Maiwenn herself. She terribly likes to run through the endless halls of Versailles, through its endless gardens, she is rushing from how beautiful it is, how many people are there. From outfits and crazy hairstyles, ceremonies and masters of ceremonies. From how fleeting life is, how short the pause between “the king is dead” and “long live the king.”
If in The Death of King Louis XIV by Albert Serra, the great Jean-Pierre Leo, the symbol of the French new wave, slowly and majestically slipped into the darkness on the screen, then Johnny Depp, the symbol of big budgets and big scandals of the 2000s, lives and dies here. This is his first major role since the Amber Heard divorce scandal and the Hollywood boycott. Depp admits that Maiwenn “acted very bravely” by letting “a Kentucky hillbilly” play Louis XV.
The rustic in this role is, of course, a great actor, although he has absolutely nothing to play: he sits and is silent, occupies the whole of Versailles and the whole royal bed. A sinner who knows that hell awaits him. A clumsy carcass, the very embodiment of the monarchy. Slow, inevitable, heavy, not in the least in love, he does not grimace or clownish, but as if remembering which facial muscles were once responsible for grimacing and clowning, and they barely noticeably twitch. It’s enough. “Controversial actor,” says Maiwenn. One that “makes you want to bow to him as soon as you enter the room.”
Madame Dubarry, played by Maiwenn, seems to fit perfectly into the movie gallery of “women in the palace” or “women in power”, a movie plot popular for our century about strong women who scorn conventions. From the farcical Catherine from the series “The Great” to the reckless Elizabeth the thinnest “Corsage” and from the ruddy Marie Antoinette from Sofia Coppola’s film to Diana Pablo Larraina (“Spencer”) – all these heroines subordinated history to themselves or obeyed it.
Maiwenn-Dubarry does not subdue and does not obey, she just wants to be close to her man. Oddly enough, today such a reading of the historical image seems almost revolutionary. Not a sufferer who is oppressed, not a rebel who was able to conquer, if not the whole world, then at least the royal court. A simple French woman, beaten by her husband, frightened by her priests. tenacious.
In theaters from July 20
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