poor rich girl

Rating: 7/10 (19 March 2007)

I have just watched this movie on DVD because it has not opened in my native Greece. The most astounding thing was that the DVD did not contain French even as a subtitle language!-it was not a pirated version, it was a very respectable legal commercial version. That a movie could be made about the French Queen without the French language- except very few words spoken by the servants- is remarkable and surely the sign of a cultural change of major proportions. As for the movie it is based on Antonia Frazer's biography and therefore is a sympathetic version to the Queen. It overstretches her innocence and lack of knowledge of French court protocol, as if the Hapsburg court was a place that people acted as spontaneously as in a discotheque. The stress on her gambling proclivity is historically attested as well as the libellous accussations that the gutter press invented against her and her entourage. The motherly figure of Marie-Therese is well presented while Louis 15 is presented as lecherous, who he was, while the portrayal of his mistress Madame Du Barry stresses too much her vulgarity and presents her as a prostitute while she was from solid bourgeois background as the former and more famous mistress of the same king, Madame Pompadour.The clichés abound, as the queen as Sheperdess. I found the scenes while she walks alone in the stairs of the gardens of Versailles very impressive visually. The politics of the movie stresses court diplomacy and ignores popular movement. The people are non-existent in this movie except in very minor and negative portrayals. I think this is in line with the book where the leading personalities are stretched and the historical role of the Parisian people is downplayed. It is a very conservative film truly. Nevertheless I generally liked it because of the very fine evocation of the costumes and scenery of the world of the super-privileged of the 18th century. I wonder if todays privileged will find role-models in this movie. I even had a moment of empathy when the Queen and her entourage where playing this game when one has a name of a person, animal etc on his forehead and through questions to the rest tries to discover it- I have played this game with friends of mine in the past- therefore I have something in common with the late French Queen! I am not deeply aware of the criticism the movie received in general although I am aware it was not very well received. It is not bad and surely it is more accurate as history compared to the 300 for example.