The newest and biggest film of Maïwenn’s directorial career, Jeanne du Barry, a film whose subject is the eponymously named final mistress to Louis XV, will forever be linked with the personal lives of the two biggest names behind the camera: Maïwenn herself and Johnny Depp, who plays the king. Both danced through the 2020s riddled by scandal and receiving public ire: Maïwenn, the famous French-Algerian actor-turned-director, has found herself lodged in the nastiest corners of the Internet for her criticism of #MeToo and, of course, for spitting on a journalist in 2021; Depp’s issues require no rehashing for the non-Martian among us. The film doesn’t do much to separate itself from these offscreen issues, and instead leans into the troubles of its cast, perhaps Depp most keenly, with the main narrative catalyst being a mixed concern of gossiping, libel, and the disapproval of the women of the court toward Jeanne (played with adoration by Maïwenn) for her iconoclasm of royal pleasantries, etiquette, and restrictive customs.

The story of Jeanne’s rise from the outskirts of the common folk to the official mistress of the King of France shoulders in it a toothless though enjoyable mockery of the royal court. With Maïwenn’s politically calculated premise, her character more or less sets her intentions to sleep her way to the top, and does so with her head held high. She knows the king can discard her at any moment and so depends on his satisfaction for social security. And by God does she love to make the man happy. Many of the men of the court are indeed grubby — not all men though: the young Dauphin (Diego Le Fur, Maïwenn’s son), the future Louis XVI, adores and protects her from the scowling looks of the other women and opens doors for her that would otherwise remain shut. But more than the men, it’s the women whose exorbitant and wooden expectations of royal femininity are most troubling: because Jeanne enjoys sexual pleasure — and because she chooses to use her body for gain — the other courtly women despite her.

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