459: Jeanne du Barry

[00:00:00] 166. Let's get to the film which is now on digital demand, purchase, rental, etc. Jeanne du Barry. Sorry if I said that name wrong, it's French. And it is directed and stars Mewin, also stars Johnny Depp, Benjamin Labrine, Pierre Ricard, few

[00:00:20] others, not a huge cast. And the synopsis is, and sorry if I'm butchering these names, I'm sure I am. The life of Jean Bessu who was born as the illegitimate daughter of an impoverished seamstress in 1743 and went on to rise through the

[00:00:35] court of Louis XV to become his last official mistress. Quite the synopsis there. So this one made waves when it premiered at film festivals over the last year and mainly because it was a

[00:00:52] return for Johnny Depp who has mostly been out of acting work for a while and he was in this big leading role and it was a French movie as well so that was another aspect to it. I didn't know anything about this woman,

[00:01:09] the titular character at all. I knew some about Louis XV but not much. So my main interest was definitely Johnny Depp. I've never heard either of the director and actor Mewen but I'm also a big fan for anyone who listens to the show

[00:01:25] regularly. I love history, I love period pieces so this was definitely in my alley. I don't care if it's a romance or an epic whatever like it's in my sweet spot for sure. I know it got okay reviews, I don't

[00:01:40] think it got trashed, but I think that because it was Johnny Depp being put into this big role and being at a big film festivals and stuff it definitely got a lot of hate just right off the bat. But for the film itself I think

[00:01:55] overall it's not very good. I really really wanted to like it. Two biggest issues by far I think first and foremost and I have the patience of molasses like I can sit and watch the slowest most deliberately paced period piece and be

[00:02:11] completely engaged and compelled. That's not an issue for me at all. Whether it's just direction, the story itself, the writing I don't know but I really found this movie to be largely dull. There's just so little going on I think

[00:02:27] that Mewen has no real edge at all to her performance. She just really feels like a completely average run-of-the-day woman which that's not a bad thing but in terms of this being a feature film following this titular character there

[00:02:44] needs to be something really to me more interesting, more complex and there's really nothing to that character that I could really latch on to. And I know that she's within the context of the movie she is coming from very

[00:02:59] impoverished beginnings and then rising up but not only that and I hate to be critical of Johnny Depp performance wise because again I love him. I don't know why he was cast in this role because just to get it out there his performance is

[00:03:20] entirely in French. He's not playing a French character but speaking in a French accent and you know speaking English. He's actually speaking fluent French and I know that he lived in France for a while and so I guess he got

[00:03:35] pretty good at it but still it's so distracting to see him where we know that he's not French and it would be better if he was just speaking English because even though he can speak it pretty well it's still not even being a French

[00:03:51] speaker myself it still feels false. And I can tell that he's not actually French especially compared to everybody else in the movie who I think is French. So that was my biggest frustration of all. I would rather have him just not been in

[00:04:10] this at all and they had gotten someone else to a Frenchman to play King Louis then even more so on top of that with Johnny Depp I feel like with everything that's happened to him and maybe it's just because he has he's on his way out

[00:04:25] acting wise you know in his career it just feels like his charisma is gone for the most part. Not totally and I'll still watch really whatever he does but I feel like he has at this point lost a lot of what made me and many other people love

[00:04:42] him. So yeah not a great movie I think could have been a lot better and overall I just don't have a big interest in this mistress character I just don't really find her that interesting maybe if I read a book about her or something

[00:04:57] that'd be different but I don't think there's a lot of story there so I don't think the film even felt that warranted. If you like period films or if you're interested in French history you know you could probably do worse but I will

[00:05:12] say it looks very good cinematography, the locations, the interiors, these huge rooms and hallways and doors so all the production stuff is strong for sure I'm not trying to say it's a horrible movie in all respects but the stuff that in

[00:05:26] the end really matters is not there for me. That is a 2 out of 5.