Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jeanne du Barry’ on Digital, a French-language Johnny Depp Costume Drama … But Don’t Call It A Comeback

Let’s be clear: Jeanne du Barry (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is not Johnny Depp’s “comeback” movie. It’s another in a recent handful of middle-to-lower-tier dramas (Minamata, Waiting for the Barbarians, City of Lies) for the man who was Hollywood’s most bankable movie star until myriad personal problems all but tanked his career. For that reason, Depp gets most of the attention for this film, which is otherwise a passion project of sorts for French filmmaker Maiwenn, who directs and stars in this historical drama about King Louis XV’s “official” in-house mistress. Reading up on the history a bit, I learned that “maitresse-en-titre” is a semi-official title that many French kings gave to their mistresses, thus affording the women status, property and, in some cases, political influence and power. This is not the type of thing you’d learn from this movie, which is weirdly empty, a pretty, but flat biopic with a big unengaged distraction of a former superstar right in the middle of it.

JEANNE DU BARRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We meet Jeanne as a child of low social stature who nevertheless warrants a narrator, because she exists in the past and the narrator exists here in the future, and therefore is aware of Jeanne’s historical notoriety. (This is just how storytelling works, you know.) “Aren’t girls who come from nothing ready for anything?” the narrator says, identifying her as a Person Of Destiny. Jeanne’s mother worked as a maid for a rich man who taught Jeanne the joy of books, and then sent her to live in a convent to preserve her innocence. Didn’t work: Jeanne kept on reading books, especially the racy ones, and got booted from the nunnery for it. She and her mother then trekked to Paris, where Jeanne faced a choice: Harlotry or a life of indentured servitude. Harlotry it is!

And so Jeanne worked as a courtesan. Count Guillaume du Barry (Melvil Poupaud) offers her “protection” until she’s positioned along the walkway of King Louis XV (Depp), who stops. In. His. Tracks. To stare at her in a long pregnant pause, until he moves on, saying nothing. Everyone in the room gasps. Before long, she’s gussied up and inspected – “She is worthy of the royal bed,” the King’s doctor proclaims, after setting down the world’s scariest speculum – and trotted into Louis’ chamber. He seems like a nice-enough guy, doesn’t say much, but one wonders if that’s because Depp’s French ain’t so great (the actor, perhaps against the odds, conforms to the demands of the film and delivers his lines in French, the quality of which I lack the skill to judge). They hit it off, this quiet lump of a man and this woman of much beauty but not much charisma. Perhaps they’re a perfect match of equal blandness of personality. 

This is when we learn all sorts of nonsensical stupidity about French royal customs and the irony-riddled convolutions of society. There’s a whole to-do where about two dozen people are trotted into the King’s boudoir every morning to watch his servants dress him, but that’s the least absurd component of this existence. Before Jeanne can be officially installed as Louis’ mistress, she has to marry Count du Barry in order to elevate her social status – better to steal another man’s wife than to have an affair with someone of a lesser caste! Even though every French king has mistresses, and Jeanne had her predecessors, and the “affair” is essentially public, with Jeanne appearing in court with the King and inspiring other women to adopt her fashions (striped dresses, jacket and pants and tri-cornered hat like the men wear), it’s still a gasping, fainting, tut-tutting SCANDAL that requires Louis’ hideous, scuttling daughters to scorn Jeanne and tease her and shun her at every opportunity, and poison her to the Dauphin’s new fiancee, an eventually headless woman named Marie-Antoinette (Pauline Pollmann). It’s like a pointless game played by bored, jobless morons drowning in wealth. Meanwhile, do Jeanne and Louis really, like, love each other? Who knows. But at least we get vast gobs of Versailles candy.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Maiwenn publicly revealed that Barry Lyndon was an inspiration; Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette was a far more stylish and revelatory version of an adjacent story.

Performance Worth Watching: Benjamin Lavernhe plays, for lack of a better phrase, the King’s mistress handler – his job is to teach Jeanne all the ridiculous king’s-court rituals, and sort of take care of her – and he has just the slightest touch of humanity beneath his facade of propriety. It’s a nicely modulated performance that gives the film a bit of emotional depth that it’s lacking elsewhere. 

Memorable Dialogue: This exchange between Jeanne and the King’s doctor:

Doc: Have you had many partners?

Jeanne: What do you mean by many?

Doc: More than one?

Jeanne: One at a time, yes, most of the time.

Sex and Skin: Let’s see… a French film… about a courtesan… and a randy aristocrat… has one very brief glimpse at an orgy-ish scene with very brief nudity. The world is upside down! Dogs and cats! Living together!

Our Take: First things $%&*# last: Jeanne du Barry leaves us with no idea whatsoever about what makes Jeanne or Louis tick, and that leads to bland drama with no real suspense. If they were truly in deep, passionate love with each other, we might be better drawn into their story, empathetic to the external criticism they face. Does Jeanne fear that she’s just a passing fancy for the King, that she’ll eventually be discarded and left to fend for herself in the wake of public scorn? Does Louis feel suffocated, living the life of a sequestered royal whose every move is subject to a half-dozen servants’ attention, whose above-the-board relationships are arranged for political purposes? We don’t know what they’re feeling, and we therefore don’t sense any internal tension in these characters. We feel nothing. Emotional engagement here runs as dry as an Allied Biscuit.

Maiwenn cultivates a stifling tone with little room for humor or horniness; this is a weirdly dispassionate film that I assume seeks to align us with a controversial figure from French history, but ultimately doesn’t show much interest in that goal. Maiwenn is curiously inert as Jeanne, and Depp downplays his role so significantly, it translates as disinterest. The only conflict here is the war between mannered society – which seemingly permits Louis’ daughters’ catty insults, but does not have time for people of minimal wealth – and, well, common sense. It’s just the old snobs-vs.-slobs story, but in 18th-century Europe’s most extravagantly bling-ass setting.

Speaking of which, Jeanne du Barry looks amazing, with significant attention to costume and setting details; part of it was filmed in Versailles itself. Its depth stops there, though, at ankle-deep, with little sense of the context that would eventually leave Louis’ legacy tarnished, and Jeanne and Marie-Antoinette’s heads detached from their bodies. It’s as if Maiwenn assumes our fascination with the ridiculous decorum and exoticism of palace life is boundless, and forgets to render her characters as anything more than mannequins wearing fancy clothes.

Our Call: Despite the controversial cache of casting Depp, Jeanne du Barry doesn’t inspire much more than a shrug of indifference. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.