Film Review: Jeanne du Barry is delightfully irreverent stuff

Jeanne du Barry

• Jeanne du Barry 
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

Jeanne du Barry (15A) stars Maïwen as Jeanne Bécu, who started life as the unwanted illegitimate child of a monk but eventually married into French society courtesy of the avaricious Comte du Barry (Melvil Poupaud), who promptly introduced her to Louis XV (Johnny Depp) in the hope that the king would bed his wife and thus resurrect to the du Barry family fortune.

A ‘life of harlotry’ beckoned, but du Barry had reckoned without the notoriously philandering king falling for Jeanne, and soon Jeanne and Louis are embarking on an affair that scandalises the French court as it frolics among the splendours of Versailles. 

Co-written and directed by Maïwen, Jeanne du Barry offers us a fearlessly curious and very modern Jeanne, a courtesan who is unconcerned with petit bourgeois strictures and who takes the pragmatic view when she realises that sex offers a guarantee of social advancement.

Maïwen is delightfully irreverent in the main role as Jeanne cuts a swathe through the court’s hypocrisies and overblown pomp, and – as a director – also creates plenty of space for Johnny Depp to deliver a counterintuitively subdued performance that is all the more effective for its muted acknowledgement of male vanity run rampant.