La favorita del rey

This movie has great visual beauty: costumes and settings are breathtaking and the cinematography is impressive. But I did have some mixed feelings when leaving the theater. This was partly due to the writing, that felt at times a bit lazy, with superficial dialogues and some abrupt jumps in time, that they tried to overcome by a voice-over filling-in several chronologic blanks (talk about lazy!).

Johnny Depp is convincing as Louis XV, his somewhat mumbling and understated way of acting suits the character fine and his French diction is impeccable. The king's mischievous sisters are at many times hilarious, and I was impressed by Benjamin Lavernhe as the king's trusted valet, his part is one of the few more multilayered ones, and he moved me to tears when at the end he had to say goodbye to his dying master. But the parts of Jeanne's beloved stepson Adolphe, as well as that of Louis's beloved third daughter, stay way too sketchy (both having hardly one line to speak) to make the supposedly enormous impact that their loss had on Jeanne and Louis relatable.

My biggest problem however was Maïwenn. She is also the director and one of the writers, and apparently couldn't resist the challenge of also taking on the major and pivotal part of Jeanne. Jeanne DuBarry was 24 years old when she, as a young and ravishing beauty, caught the eye of King Louis. Well, Maïwenn can hardly be called a beauty; besides, she was already past 45 at the time of shooting, and clearly looked her age. In her sumptuous costumes she may make a royal impression, but it's hard to swallow that the king specifically chose her out of that endless line of much more attractive and younger women.

In short: not really bad, with great visual beauty (and by the way an equally impressive score!), but unfortunately neither really good.