The Duchesse de Polignac: Virginie Ledoyen plays the queen’s favourite, possibly her lover, and brings to the role a poise, a noble hauteur and a quality that’s arresting and never completely knowable. In Versailles, everyone depends on a power structure that has just crashed into an iceberg. He shows people finding out about it, and their reactions will remind many of post-9/11 feelings: panic, fear and the sense of living in a transformed universe. Like 9/11:Jacquot doesn’t show the storming of the Bastille. Anyone who knows anything about the dynamics of stardom, as does Jacquot, knows exactly how this works. The closer you are to one of the monarchs – even if you’re a 20-year-old who reads to the queen – the more you are perceived as powerful. So the world inside the court, just visually, seems fragile to the world outside it – before anything happens.Īccess is power: One comes away with an understanding of the power dynamic within the royal court. The opulence and squalor: In Versailles, everything shines, and yet, as depicted by Jacquot, the dirt and squalor of 18th century life always find a way to get inside. Seydoux is considered one of the best young actresses in France. It’s a look of devotion but also observation, the look of someone who sees and understands everything, yet says almost nothing. That’s how Seydoux, who plays Sidonie, looks at the queen. The eyes of Léa Seydoux: There is a saying that a cat can look at a king. But it’s in the ways that queens are different that they are interesting. Too close and we might mistake Marie Antoinette for someone like ourselves. This up-close but outside perspective gives us a good idea of who the queen was and how the monarchy functioned. The point of view: The story, which takes place over three days in 1789, is seen through the eyes of Sidonie, the queen’s reader. Her high spirits are infectious her desperation and despair, bottomless. She also can turn on a dime between down-to-earth and imperious. And, in this context, that makes her seem vulnerable before she even says a word.

Kruger is fluent in French and has had an extensive career in French films, but surrounded by French people, she looks like a foreigner. The ideal casting of Diane Kruger: Marie Antoinette was Austrian Kruger is German. Here are eight good reasons to see this movie: Other films about Marie Antoinette have had their moments, but Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen is the first to give a real sense of what it must have felt like to live inside that palace as the walls were caving in.

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