(Paris) Far from buzz media around Maïwenn and Johnny Depp, stars of Jeanne du Barry which opens the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, this film on the last favorite of Louis XV is “academic” and “classic”, claims its director.
Co-producer, director and main actress, Maïwenn, who plays Madame du Barry, revels in the fact that her feature film, which marks the return to the screen of the American actor and is also released in theaters in France on Tuesday, will surprise critics with its classicism.
“It was a way of saying: you don’t know me,” she told AFP.
“I am a multifaceted, unpredictable person. It’s not because my films before were shot in improv, in a very modern way, that I don’t like classical cinema, classical music, the classical French language”.
Depp, “obvious”
When she offers the star the role of a king of France, she is far from suspecting that Johnny Depp and herself will find themselves caught up in legal affairs: him during two sensational trials opposing him to his ex -companion Amber Heard, she for the complaint filed in March by the co-founder of Mediapart Edwy Plenel who accuses her of having assaulted him in a restaurant in Paris.
If Maïwenn does not comment on her “ongoing case” – she formally acknowledged the attack on Wednesday during the show Daily —, she says she had “concerns” about the impact of Depp’s trials.
“The film was shot last summer, it was coming out of its second trial. I was full of worries, I said to myself: what will become of his image? »
No regrets, however, on the – surprising – choice of an American actor to embody a king of France.
“With him, it was so obvious,” says Maïwenn, who says he initially approached two French actors who declined or procrastinated.
With an almost perfect French, Depp impresses above all with his facial expressions, amorous, amused or imperious, throughout this film shot in several castles in France and in the studio.
“Same Temperament”
It’s thanks to the film by Sofia Coppola Marie Antoinette that Maïwenn discovered the character of Jeanne du Barry, a girl of the people, courtesan and last great love of Louis XV.
“It made me fantasize about making a period film one day, but it was the discovery of Jeanne du Barry embodied by Asia Argento that completely obsessed me,” says the director, whose film My king competed for the Palme d’Or in 2015.
“It’s complicated to always justify your desires. That’s how she intrigued me, ”she grows impatient.
“She and I, we are of the same temperament, from the same planet”, assures the director, who married at 16 with Luc Besson and had mentioned in interviews having been the victim of abuse from his parents.
Maïwenn shows Jeanne du Barry — whose real name is Jeanne Bécu or de Vaubernier — from her childhood with an unscrupulous mother, to her introduction to the court of Versailles, shocked by her past as a prostitute.
“I didn’t want to overlook his venal or even racist side with Zamor”, his page and former slave who, years later, would lead to his guillotine conviction.
Like Madame du Barry, she sought to adapt to the “complicated codes of the court”, introduced on screen by a comical and touching Benjamin Lavernhe in the role of La Borde, the king’s first valet.
If the film is far from the “rock and roll” spirit of that of Coppola, its director assumes some sprains to historical reality: Jeanne marries Count Jean du Barry, when she has in fact married his brother Guillaume.
The biggest challenge was the lack of time. “I was ten weeks old, it was very little,” says Maïwenn. “It’s a film that cost 20 million, but it would have taken 10 more” to maintain a normal shooting rate.
She brushes aside any controversy over the Saudi co-financing of the feature film, saying that “it’s proof that mentalities are changing”.
According to Collectif 50/50, the director is in charge of the French film directed by a woman with the highest budget of the year. “It’s expensive, the 18e century,” she says.