Maïwenn has filmed the life of the mistress “Jeanne du Barry”, starring herself and Johnny Depp as the king – a soulful biography that cares little about power structures.
Powerful women who lived in times when all power was actually reserved for men fire the imagination. Among the great ladies who keep appearing in the cinema is Madame du Barry, the last mistress of Louis XV. until his death in 1774. She was at Versailles the maitresse en titre, which, significantly, was one of the highest-ranking and highest-paying jobs a poor girl could get into. How Jeanne du Barry was viewed was always a question of the zeitgeist. Is she now a free-spirited woman because she would rather be a king’s mistress than go to a monastery or become a servant? A nasty schemer like Asia Argento played in Sofia Coppola’s “Marie-Antoinette”? The French filmmaker Maïwenn, who has long been fascinated by this woman, sees her differently: as a clever, headstrong young woman who knows how to seize her opportunities. This is how she portrays Jeanne in her film “Jeanne du Barry”, which she wrote and directed – and she takes on the leading role, of course, herself.