Jeanne du Barry

★★★☆☆

Dir Maïwenn

Starring Johnny Depp, Maïwenn, Benjamin Lavernhe

117 mins Cert 15

The rosebud lips of Johnny Depp are here pursed in a strange expression of irony, stupefied entitlement and droll, martyred awareness of the absurdity of which his royal person is the centre; he looks like a human candle starting to melt. Depp plays King Louis XV in the decadent court of pre-revolutionary Versailles, purring his lines in French and playing him as the ageing, slowmoving dandy – though Rip Torn was sexier in the same role in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

Depp might actually have been better cast as the lead: Madame Jeanne du Barry, the entrancingly sensual mistress and royal favourite with whom the king was scandalously infatuated. Jeanne is in fact played by the movie’s director, Maïwenn. Mme du Barry is supposed to be a rebel, although apart from causing some flutter among the courtiers with her gender-dissident clothes, and of course by simply existing, she never seriously challenges anything about court life at all.

The film is a preposterous confection, like one of the rich sweetmeats being nibbled at court, but moreish nonetheless. While making a stately procession past an array of bowing flunkies at Versailles, Louis is struck by Jeanne’s beauty. After a gruesome gynaecological inspection by the royal doctors, Jeanne is admitted to the kingly presence à deux; things proceed satisfactorily enough (although we are spared a sex scene) and soon they are gigglingly inseparable.

The essential silliness of the film is part of its watchability, though Louis and Jeanne are not entirely credible as a love story, perhaps because of the cynicism in which they are both complicit and perhaps because the performances are a little opaque.

It’s an entertaining spectacle, only partly aware of its own vanity.