Jeanne Dubarry: Is The King Back?

After years of scandal, Jeanne Dubarry will begin her royal procession in Russian cinemas tomorrow with her first role, Johnny Depp. In May, the picture opened the Cannes Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation for seven minutes, but Johnny Depp, who returned triumphantly to the big cinema after watching it, turned out to be the person who received more applause from the film itself. as a product of industry

The costume drama is set in 18th-century France, several decades before the French Revolution, and tells the story of an ordinary person named Jeanne Becu, who confidently climbs the social ladder from the beds of the upper classes. His clients include Count Dubary, Field Marshal Richelieu, and most recently, His Royal Highness King Louis XV. Thus, yesterday’s prostitute becomes a favorite of the monarch, and not only to the royal family and courtiers, who, as expected, is happy for herself.

Overall, Jeanne Dubarry is a pretty well-known character in popular culture. Alexandre Dumas appeared in the novel “Joseph Balsamo or Notes of a Doctor”, in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Idiot”, in Theodore Dreiser’s novel “The Financier”, and in different years the hero played by Theda Bara, Pola Negri, Martin Carol and others. Now the baton has been stopped by Maiwenn, the director and lead actress of modern-day Jeanne Dubarry.

And her Jeanne Dubarry, although from the 18th century, is not without prejudice in the modern agenda and therefore refuses to pose nude for the artist (“This is my body”), allowing herself a courtesy in a men’s suit or a black slave – a gift from the king.

However, this has little effect on the overall atmosphere of the film, and Jeanne Dubarry’s output turns into a classic costume drama with a Cinderella-spirited plot.

If you dig deeper, our Maivenn is Julia Roberts and Johnny Depp from Pretty Woman a few centuries ago, Richard Gere, who turns out to be a sensitive and quite nice person.

In the palace there is even the royal secretary La Borde, unlike many who managed to dismiss the unfortunate, because where in such a story without a secondary character, no, no, and who showed sympathy for the main character?

That said, I don’t want to scold Jeanne Dubarry for following the rules – Maivenn clearly didn’t try to reinvent the genre or make a revolution, and so she made a pretty valuable movie for mass audiences with obvious metaphors (when it’s officially in the clouds). It starts to pile on Jeanne Dubarry, it gets really dark), character cliches (how many times we see “unnecessary people” on screen, but fascinating in their simplicity), orchestral music in the background, and historical references. And it’s important to understand that a classic like this is the best Johnny Depp can do for himself in a flashback context. The role itself does not require that he be complex or experimental, deliberately frenzied or exaggerated emotions – Louis XV is dry, still, noblely independent and reticent. The actress seems to make a compromise with this role: a good option to calmly return to the working channel, but bad if you need to declare yourself with this turn. But this falls into the hands of the film itself – it seems that the opening of Cannes and the audience would not have found such interest if the prefix “Jeanne Dubarry” had not been “Johnny Depp’s first role after the divorce.”