'Jeanne du Barry' Review: The Johnny Depp-Starring Cannes Opener Is Really Just Another Maïwenn Showcase – IndieWire

Zeroing in on a glamorous notable from this or that royal court docket, and utilizing them a form of model over which to drape lofty themes and elaborations, “Jeanne du Barry” is a wonderfully serviceable entry in a style born of the stage and perfected by Previous Hollywood: the star showcase. That the icon within the highlight is writer-director-lead actor Maïwenn, and never her American co-star Johnny Depp, ought to come as a reduction to some, a crushing disappointment to others, and shock to utterly nobody. Simply have a look at the movie’s title.

Or, look to the auteur behind this yr’s Cannes Movie Competition opener. For these whose familiarity with the diva ends on the blue make-up she wore in Luc Besson’s “The Fifth Component,” the French director has minimize her tooth with movies that hew to risky rhythms, “actorly” options that push high-decibel disputes all the way in which to 11 and that (nearly at all times) discover an on-screen anchor within the determine of Maïwenn herself. To name the model “self-infatuated” is much less a criticism than a easy assertion of truth. The auteur guarantees director and muse wrapped in a single, with a voice louder and angrier than that of anybody else; when not on display screen, all the opposite characters are likely to ask, The place’s Maïwenn?

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With “Jeanne du Barry,” she has lastly accessed her time machine. Opening up a gilded window onto Versailles below the Ancien Régime, the costume epic affords no scarcity of luxurious and no lack of visible delights, usually reveling within the ostentatious shows of French monarchical energy because it tracks a well-recognized story of rags-to-riches-to-rags once more within the court docket of Louis XV.

Responding to the stately environment, Maïwenn’s beforehand frenetic digicam slows down in flip, overlaying a lot of the motion in elegant, vast compositions crammed with comfortable mild. With such a painterly visible scheme and with small drops of ever-so-wry voiceover, the movie eagerly welcomes comparisons to a sure Kubrick traditional, significantly in a gap chapter that tracks by what means the lowborn Jeanne Vaubernier acquired the model and title of Jeanne du Barry.

These means, in fact, are carnal, although as we observe the courtesan’s skilled rise, we by no means linger within the boudoir nor dwell on the tawdrier elements of the plot. As spun by Maïwenn and co-writers Teddy Lussi-Modeste and Nicolas Livecchi, the script casts Jeanne as a completely fashionable mistress carving her approach throughout a storybook world to enhance her lot in life. A enterprise union with the Comte du Barry (Melvil Poupaud) — primarily a glorified pimp — places Jeanne in touch with the king’s valet, La Borde (Benjamin Lavernhe). Like a wigged-and-cosseted Henry Higgins, the palace valet faculties our truthful girl in pomp and circumstance, ushering her by the halls of mirrors and into the king’s bedchamber, whereas Jeanne performs viewers surrogate.

And boy, what a surrogate she performs, constructing in direction of a giddy peak as Jeanne observes the king’s dressing ceremony from behind a one-way-mirror. In a pleasant and cannily directed sequence, Maïwenn each crystalizes the underlying attraction of the palace style and finds its most potent expression. Which is to say, the filmmaker acknowledges that we flock to such pageantry to each revel and take the piss, and that the 2 reactions are mutually needed for the entire shebang to work. Like your Twitter feed for the Oscars or a good friend on the sofa throughout the current coronation, Jeanne acts as on-screen confidante and launch valve, letting out the air within the stuffiest room you ever did see with barely stifled laughter, whereas from behind the digicam, director Maïwenn orchestrates an ornate opera of courtiers with gravity-defying pompadours.

Assembly eyes along with her lover from the evening earlier than, Jeanne makes use of that second to solidify her bond with Louis XV, performed, in fact, by Johnny Depp. Although performing wholly in French and given ample display screen time, the American star leaves a unusually scant impression, providing a dim and muted flip that performs off his wider popularity in usually fascinating methods.

Launched as the article of Jeanne’s gaze, and nearly by no means seen with out new mistress by his aspect, Louis is much less topic than object, a conquest for the courtesan and a high-value get — bargained at a no-doubt cut-rate worth because of extenuating circumstances — that affords the French manufacturing a further little bit of luster. For Louis is a person lengthy gone to seed, a one-time solar king whose glow has dimmed in luxurious and indulgence, however whose title — and energy that also holds — endures; and if the 2 performers by no means fairly kindle a spark, their narrative (and metatextual) liaison by no means does pressure credulity.       

Nonetheless, for all these self-aware touches and impressed casting winks, “Jeanne du Barry” runs out of steam awfully quick. Whereas hewing to a traditionally correct speed-run by Louis XV’s last years from his mistress’ perch, the narrative has little floor to cowl as soon as that commoner flame asserts her place at court docket. Moderately than ratcheting pressure with a 3rd act reversal, the late arrival Marie-Antoinette (Pauline Pollmann) lays naked the exhausting limits of preserving Jeanne our sole middle of gravity.

Although each consorts would later meet sudden and related ends in a revolution percolating imperceptibly off-screen, the movie resists any and all impulse for bigger thematic echoes. Like each different character, the brand new dauphine affords Jeanne an admirer and a thwart, however by no means an equal, barely a scene accomplice, and at no level a chance to counterpoint the biographical narrative “Jeanne du Barry” is ostensibly attempting to honor.

Extra irritating than a misfire, “Jeanne du Barry” suffers as an alternative from close to complete myopia, roaring to life with wit and ingenuity when the constellations align and the lead’s star can shine, and dwindling earlier than the chance of any potential eclipse. The movie burns sizzling and vivid — and shortly flames out.    

Grade: B-

“Jeanne du Barry” premiered on the 2023 Cannes Movie Competition. It’s presently looking for U.S. distribution.

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