Jeanne du Barry shows that problem films are above all bad films

So that his readers don’t have to visit him if they don’t want to, to miss saw Joan of Barry by Maïwenn, giving himself the mission to be as objective as possible – while being aware at all times that he is facing a film whose director makes fun of feminists and victims of gender-based and sexual violence.

Despite all the goodwill put into view and analyzing the feature film with the same method and the same need as any film, the conclusion is clear: Maiwenn’s film is mediocre.

A seemingly nonconformist character, but an incredibly classic and bland film

With Joan of Barrythe ambition shown by Maïwenn could be summed up in two sentences: shocking, without ever being subversive. Try to provoke and always miss the mark.

On paper, the film tries to develop a character that is supposed to be profound emancipatedwho breaks the codes presented as futile of decorum and conventions in the 18th century. But in reality, the film consists of a succession of scenes that appear only as pretexts to film Maïwenn. Maïwenn runs and laughs with her hair down because Maïwenn is fiery and free. Maïwenn is reading a book because she prefers curiosity to mischievous court gossip … So much so that more often one has the impression of being in front of a perfume advertisement than in front of a film about a woman who questions the norms of a social environment and of an era.

The problem with this choice is also that everything else in the film looks like papier-mâché decoration of negligible importance. The scenario is predictable and transforms the fact of don’t yawn or dive into a real challenge. The other characters – including the kingwhich we have been persistent enough to find hypnotic and outrageous – they often are relegated to the off-screen and struggling to exist. Therefore, the worst characters in the film are probably his three daughters. Presented as ugly, slanderous and stupid compared to the solar supposed Jeanne du Barry, they give the impression that in front of the film one is less in front of a Maria Antonietta by Sofia Coppola who in front of a sub-Cinderella and her share of evil sister-in-laws.

Despite all the efforts of the production to invest the Palace of Versailles as a filming location, have Maïwenn wear very beautiful clothes and punctuate each sequence with a baroque music that never stops, impossible to believe everything. One always has the impression of being faced with a completely disembodied reconstruction of the era.

The film fails by wanting to rise to the rank of greatest; Maria Antonietta OR Barry Lyndon

To the disinterest in the era represented or for the scenario is added the declared desire to rise to the rank of the greatest filmmakers of historical films. Let’s think back to Sofia Coppola with Maria Antonietta or to Stanley Kubrick with Barry Lyndon. In both cases the failure is as bitter as the attempt to present itself as the legacy of these films is explicit.

Joan of Barry includes many scenes that seem lit by candlelight, to use the concept that made Kubrick’s film the masterpiece we know. Unfortunately, the device is a fiasco and we no longer count the number of scenes in which we see absolutely nothing. The image is spectacular boring, grey, dimly lit.

Choosing a scandalous actor to frame as a subversive director doesn’t make for an interesting film

As such, the moment when Joanna and the king meet alone for the first time is particularly significant. While the sequence is one of the heaviest stakes in the film, it should mark the moment when a special and complicit relationship Between them, you can barely make out Johnny Depp’s face. The actor is glued to his seat, gibberish French words that he seems to have learned phonetically, while, again, most of the shots focus on Jeanne, who is walking, lets her hair down, sensually touches a statue.

Realization as the actress’s game seems to finally lose interest completely by Johnny Depp or the relationship between Joan and Louis XV: what matters, is that Maiwenn is making “a film and a performance that will mark the history of cinema”…

Ultimately, Jeanne du Barry is so weak, dull and disembodied that everything suggests that the director had to dig into the hotly debated chronicles to give her an identity.

Without the Depp/Heard “scandal”, it is more than likely that the film would have been forgotten after a week.

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