Louis XV’s infatuation with a sexy, smart courtesan played by Maïwenn – who also writes and directs – is an entertaining spectacle but preening Depp’s king overshadows her story
The rosebud lips of Johnny Depp in this film are pursed in a strange expression of irony, stupefied entitlement and droll, martyred awareness of the absurdity of which his royal person is the centre: a human candle starting to melt. He plays Louis XV in the decadent court of pre-revolutionary Versailles, purring his lines in French and playing him as the ageing, slow-moving dandy – though Rip Torn was sexier in the same role in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
Depp might actually have been better cast as the lead: Madame Jeanne du Barry, the low-born and entrancingly sensual mistress and royal favourite with whom the king was scandalously infatuated at court, permitting her all manner of familiarities and intimacies. Jeanne is in fact played by the movie’s director, Maïwenn, who has written the screenplay with Teddy Lussi-Modeste and Nicolas Livecchi.
