2023-05-17 12:46:50
Fdoes being guillotined still fall under domestic violence? The question is plausible given the plot and cast of Jeanne du Barry, which kicked off the 76th Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night. Johnny Depp as King Louis XV and Maïwenn as his mistress, who ends up under the guillotine. In the days before, executioners had sharpened their blades on tabloids and social media: is this a worthy opening film? Is that still feminism?
It is true that a story is told closely along the lines of historical truth. Admittedly, as the title already makes clear, the woman is in the foreground, namely one who is responsible for the title role, direction and screenplay, who therefore rules this realm as her own sun queen. But she’s got a crush on Johnny Depp for the man at her side, who has lost his footing after the grueling trial of his ex-wife Amber Heard in America. Yes, he was acquitted by a grand jury, but what’s an acquittal worth these days, even in Cannes, where Woody Allen’s ostentatious unloading is worth no more than artistic director Thierry Frémaux’s famous throwaway gesture?
At the press conference on Monday, Frémaux said he only talks about films that have been invited. Allen did everything he could to get hugs back on the Croisette, just like when he had a subscription to the red carpet: he shot in Paris, with French actors, even in French. When asked if he even understood what was being said, he just mumbled politely, oh yes, that’s fine. He even announced it would be his last film. He’s said so before, but this time he made an effort to be particularly convincing.
Royal melancholy: Maïwenn and Johnny Depp
Quelle: Stephanie Branchu/Why Not Productions
Of course, “Jeanne du Barry” still has a few good arguments to start here in pole position: The plot could not be more French and state-supporting, it is a kind of filmed nationalism, but with exactly the contemporary twist that is based on the Paper needs – the woman in the center and in the director’s chair. In addition, there has to be a distributor that rolls out the thing downright absolutist and almost at the same time as the Cannes premiere across the country. And international star power please, even if it’s slightly yellowed, that’s how the old Europeans like it.
So now Johnny Depp is walking the red carpet taking selfies with sleepy Chihuahuas. He wears a safety pin in his ear, maybe in case his collar bursts (a parricide, btw) or just to be on the safe side. Whenever you see him lately, you wonder how far his Mickeyrourke development has come. Let’s put it this way: in the film, shot a year ago, he looks worse, bloated and sad. But it also fits the role. Female fans hold up encouraging placards; they forgave him what could be forgiven, and perhaps there was nothing at all. Old Pierre Richard comes by, the once tall blond with the black shoe. Today he plays a happy old man. Depp gives him an encouraging slap, which he may mean himself.
Enter Michael Douglas, who is about to receive the Palme d’Or for life’s work. He looks ill, emaciated, as if he had escaped at the last minute from the notorious prison island of Sainte-Marguerite, a stone’s throw from the Festival Palace. You know her from the man in the iron mask. Douglas climbs the stairs, supported by his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones and their daughter. The spectacle is a surprising memento mori in the photographers’ flashlight, heartbreaking yet charming. When Douglas stands and laughs, he’s the old man and outplays the rest of the family. Zeta-Jones looks like Morticia, the mother of the Addams family.
Reached the top: Carys Zeta Douglas, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones
Quelle: picture alliance/David Niviere/ABACAPRESS.COM
Later, alongside Cathérine Deneuve, he declares the film festival open. She had previously read a poem for Ukraine, looking a bit battered herself, as if she had barely survived the bombings in Kiev. That’s not meant to sound bad, it’s just the truth of an art that opposes dying. Netflix is co-producing Jeanne du Barry, pledging to release the film in cinemas at least in France. Douglas mentions that he’s 78, older than the festival itself. “I’m amazed,” he says, visibly touched, “that I’ve held out for so long.”
The jury does its honors, chaired by last year’s winner Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”), who laconically praises the joys of going to the cinema compared to the loneliness of scrolling on the smartphone. The algorithm makes you stupid, the cinema forces you to think, if only because later you might have to explain to your neighbor how you found it. Sitting at Ostlund’s side is Brie Larson, who the red carpet photographers called out like French cheese because that’s her name. On the other hand, fellow judge Paul Dano looked like a camembert melting in the sun as he smiled for selfies. Then there’s Julia Ducournau, the strict amazon of contemporary pop avant-garde, who won the Palme d’Or two years ago with the body horror Titane, which has been hardened in all gender discourses.
A plump countertenor sings “Stand By Me”, Mads Mikkelsen sheds a tear on the floor, almost like he did in “Casino Royale” when he cried blood, and then things really get going. With a painter in a meadow drawing a little girl. She is the bastard, as it was once said, of a monk and a cook, and therefore not necessarily destined for higher things in a classy society. But, as the scene shows, she has the talent to captivate men. In addition, being a proletarian is not her thing. That’s how she first reads herself up, as a living audio book of strict countesses, who throw her out when they discover that she does close-reading with her sons at night.
Twice Catherine Deneuve
Credit: AFP/VALERY HACHE
From then on, she finds herself qualified enough to sleep her way full-time. Finally she ends up with the king, whose melancholic eye has long since lingered on any courtesan. “You look like a six-franc coin,” marveled Jeanne at her debut in his bower. She feels a gold bust, determines that it is probably the young king, and sits on his lap to check the contours in person. This is how seduction works, dear children!
With Maïwenn life comes into the booth. She refuses the custom of only stepping backwards to leave the king, wears her hair loose, i.e. without the musty wigs, wears men’s clothes, openly kisses Louis at the banquet, and that shortly after the death of his unloved queen, in short: her is the incarnate sin of the flesh, an outright scandal. The ugly king’s daughters rant for two hours and only stop when the king is dead and Jeanne is expelled from the court.
The spoilers are okay, everything is on Wikipedia accordingly. And you can’t say that the film draws its tension from the plot. Its qualities lie more in the nice details, the view through the semi-transparent mirror when Jeanne observes the king’s morning toilet. The ritual is historically documented: when getting up, urinating, etc., half the court was present. Johnny Depp makes teasing faces, but otherwise he’s pleasantly reserved. In English, when an actor coolly surfs through a movie, they say they phone their role home. Here you could say Depp sends carrier pigeons. He looks a bit like the late Marlon Brando, his idol by the way, who found all the Hollywood hype so stupid that he only took part pro forma. From a certain talent, and of course Depp has it en masse, it can even be quite likeable.
Knicks in the optics: Jeanne du Barry (Maïwenn) and Johnny Depp (Louis XV) “Jeanne du Barry”
What: pa/dpa/Why Not Productions/Festival De Cannes/Stéphanie Branchu
So “Jeanne du Barry” is really a sympathetic opening film – not really great, not really bad, just a bit fussy and surprisingly lacking in concept. A clothes outfit. At the end, the guillotine waits, albeit in the off, long after the end of the action. And Johnny Depp definitely has no hand in that.
At the premiere party, it was rumored that the whole thing was a thinly veiled retelling of Maïwenn’s own love story with director Luc Besson, who married her in his thirties; she was just 16. He was inspired by it for “Léon the Professional”, but wisely avoided having sex between Jean Reno and Natalie Portman. Portman testified today that, looking back, he no longer felt comfortable with the film. Maïwenn, on the other hand, doesn’t let anything get on her Luc, even though they haven’t been together for a long time. Then, earlier this year, she pulled a critic’s hair and spat in his face. All this excites the French, or at least they pretend it does, but it’s too silly to dwell on. Let’s go, the festival is open.
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