If there is a medium in which the confusion between the image of the author and his work risks engulfing the work itself, it is cinema. There are countless actors, directors and, above all, actor-directors who have experienced or been struck by this coincidence. The case of Maiwenn, well known in France and to a lesser extent in Italy, is even sensational, since her identification with Madame du Barry is total, and also proudly declares herself in the first person.
The daughter of an Algerian intellectual and a French linguist, a crooked and peremptory beauty, who later recalled a difficult childhood in her stand-up shows of a comedian, ex-model, ex-wife-child of Luc Besson (she is 16, he is 33), Director of six other films, including wonderful and Controversial in Polisse, Meiwenne has dreamed of telling about Louis XV’s mistress ever since he saw Asia Argento in her role in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Thus, after a long work of writing, this self-taught, who at the age of 12 heard her mother cry: “What a pity that you do not yet know Antonioni!” he took his courage in both hands and made his film. Pulls the character towards him in all ways. And to entrust the role of the now 60-year-old king and dejected by the loss of Madame Pompadour to the same American and now Marlonbrandesco. Johnny Depp.
Much less would be enough to fear catastrophe. Instead, despite the scholastic narrative voice that opens and closes the film, Jeanne du Barry seduces, amuses, convinces. Maiwenn, as a director, keeps to a minimum a light set of pop and Marie Antoinette anachronisms, but also eschews any academicism, relying on the pace and infectious fun with which he plunges into the role. The combination of the royal court with its infernal codes and rituals with no less crazy, but strict rules that apply in the world of cinema or fashion.
In a sarabande of inventions that give a joyful feminist aftertaste of a small revolution made in Versailles by this courtesan, who came from nowhere, but is able to love and be loved, violating all the dictates of etiquette. Even if it meant visually navigating between the hatred shown by the daughters of Louis XV (reddish-red Indian hair is hilarious and arrogant), the benevolence of the powerful Richelieu (the priceless Pierre Richard) and the veiled advice of the king’s sharp-eyed first valet, the only fictional figure (the stunning Benjamin Laverne). In the triumph of picturesque echoes and joyful transgressions, first of all, costumes and hairstyles. But always, like the plague, he eludes the temptation that today is so burdensome for costume cinema. Ideology.
Jeanne du Barry
from Maiwenn,
France, 116′
ACTION!
Jury? Make way for the youth. In Venice this year the official selection is crowded with “senators”, but the chairmen of the three juries are young applicants. Damien Chazelle, Contest, is actually 38; Jonas Carpignano, Horizons, 39. Alice Diop, revelation director of Saint Omer, winner of the De Laurentiis Prize for first work, 44.
AND STOP
Shamefully ignored at Cannes, triumphantly rehabilitated in Venice, Roman Polanski and Woody Allen are taking revenge. Two of their new films, “Palace” and “Chance”, will be presented out of competition at the Lido. But to say that sometimes Italy is freer than France has a strange effect.