Palais royal!

When you look at the actress playing Armelle, an ordinary speech therapist inadvertently married to a prince, when you consider her shapeless body, her unappealing face, her unbecoming clothing style you just can't believe she is the same Valérie Lemercier who found the energy necessary to write this story, to convince producers to give her enough money to make this lavish-looking movie, to allow her to film it in three different countries, with a stellar cast, including Catherine Deneuve in a royal but self-mocking role, and, to crown it all, featuring herself as the leading lady...! But when the ugly duckling starts rebelling against the silly etiquette that stifles her and against the falseness masked by fairy tale appearances, slowly blossoming into a slick, elegant, attractive, self-assertive young lady, you suddenly realize that Valérie Lemercier is not cast against type. Just like real life humorist Valérie Lemercier, Armelle has become go ahead, dynamic and capable, refusing to be manipulated, commenting on her social environment with biting humor.

"Palais Royal!", her third work as a director, is a comedy, but there is more to it than that. It is also - and most of all- a sharp satire of life at court, denouncing its silly etiquette as well as all the meanness, the falseness and the hidden vulgarity inherent in such regimes.In great part inspired by the doomed destiny of Diana, princess of Wales, the film makes the viewer understand better the Via Dolorosa Diana had to go through before her untimely death. But, thanks to comedy, Lemercier does it avoiding the heavy-handed pathos of a soap.

The actors are all excellent. I will single out a few, like Catherine Deneuve, perfect as the callous queen, Lambert Wilson as the new king not exactly killing himself at his royal task, Michel Aumont as the would-be dignified chief of protocol and Michel Vuillermoz as pathetic prince Alban, ruled out from the throne for "testicule reasons".

The only shortcoming I would deplore is the excessive vulgarity Lemercier indulges in. Of course she means to expose this defect among people who have exquisite manners while on official duty and who let themselves go as soon as they are away from the limelight, but this viewer feels that she derives pleasure in being graphic. Such complacency slightly reduces the impact of the satire. Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch who have often been accused of the same leaning for vulgarity knew where to draw the line though.

Whatever, all in all, a film well worth seeing.

PALAIS ROYAL!

The opening night movie of a well-attended film series tends to be something lightweight and a bit glitzy that's designed to be a deliberate crowd-pleaser, and the gala opener of the 2006 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Today at Lincoln Center -- a film featuring Catherine Deneuve as a haughty queen mother -- is an elaborate, sometimes vulgar and slapstick, but mostly fluffy comedy about a principality like Monaco or Luxembourg and the things that happen when its ruler suddenly dies. The late king's spoiled second son ascends to the throne bypassing his more serious, well-educated older brother because the latter isn't married. Arnaud's do-gooder wife (played by the writer/director, French comic Valérie Lemercier, a popular French comedienne more known in the US for starring in Claire Denis's well received and serious sexual adventure Friday Night/Vendredi soir).

Lemercier's character gradually turns into an ambitious new princess like Lady Di, and along with general laugh-manufacture, the film constitutes a satire on such behavior and the packaging and promoting of modern-day high-visibility "royals." There is no faulting the actors, and Deneuve is as droll as she's elegant, Lambert Wilson is stylish as the lazy new king, Michel Aumont is imposing as the chief of protocol and Michel Vuillermoz is appealing as the sad elder prince. But though Palais Royal! moves as rapidly as a comedy should, it's a bit hard to be interested in this theme at a time when people are starving and being tortured and real social gaps are between rich and poor, with a feudal aristocracy no longer a real issue.

We begin with future king, wife, and two best friends on a shopping spree in London, and there is nothing to like about these spoiled people – which of course is the point; and the French are good at doing grumpy, obnoxious snobs (Pierre Bakri in last year's Look at Me/Comme une image is a splendid example) – but this makes it hard to stay interested in these folks. It's also hard to read the subtitles, and I couldn't follow the fast "comic" dialogue. Probably only the French people in Alice Tully Hall were able to find that dialogue consistently funny, and only some of THEM. Clearly there was a lot of word-play that the subtitles, when one could read them, obviously was struggling to convey.

The glitzy fluff was there, there was fluency in the flow of the action, there was a satirical point of view, there were highly regarded actors. If it was hard to sit through this and make it to the wine and cheese and French celebrities, but since I was gearing up to watch all fifteen handpicked new French films in a row it still seemed like a pretty soft job.

(Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2006 opening night presentation, March 2006; Palais Royal! opened in Paris November 23, 2005.)

This is, of course, a comedy. So, let's talk funny: three testicles theme, the whole Deneuve character, the opening London sequence, personal trainer guy - very funny. The whole thing is a bit long, but quite enjoyable. I'm just wondering if they also ridicule the Belge (the only French-speaking continental people with royalty), as it goes along, but I don't know French enough to catch the nuances. One interesting quality - since it is a poke at the English, the humour is very held-back (not the usual French buffonade), easily the "English gentlemen"-like comic routine, perfectly in line with stuff like the "Stiff upper lip". I guess it is THE stylistic gimmick used here, apart from the obvious Diana satire, to our delight.

A great reinvention of the story of life and death of lady Diana Spencer. It takes place in imaginary French-speaking country of Western Europe. after the accidental death of the king his younger son has to take his place which makes his wife - a speech therapist Armelle, the potential queen. The current queen, francophone re-incarnation of Queen Elizabeth II (minus UGLY part), played by magnificent Catherine Deneuve, is not sure that this plain-looking awkward woman can bear the royal duties with dignity and clearly doesn't care about her. After series of misadventures, Armelle feels like she doesn't fit in the royal world and when she discovers her husband adultery, she decides to take revenge. She'll show them all who is the real queen of hearts! This comedy makes you laugh and cry. Catherine Deneuve looks stunning and parades in a real fashion show of outfits, wearing them with truly royal grace. The parallels with Lady Di story are in-your-face, but rather charming, because they are put in the continental French-speaking milieu.

If a list of the most underrated personalities of French cinema is drawn,Valérie Lemercier would easily figure in it with veteran director Patrice Leconte. About Valérie Lemercier it can be said that she never ceases to amuse critics and viewers in equal measure. Watching her films as an actress as well as a director, one get the feeling that she is not as dumb as she prefers to get depicted. She proves this assertion in her film "Palais Royal". Most people view comedy as a frivolous activity which does not interest serious people. This fallacy is vigorously challenged by leading French actress/director Valérie Lemercier as she establishes that comedy is a highly serious business which can be an enormous aid too in getting key issues heard by a large section of the society. As a comedy film, "Palais Royal" is an innocuous assault on the whims and fancies of a royal family whose members suffer from numerous ethical as well as moral weaknesses. Audiences get to see how the members of a royal family are normal human beings with decent share of vices as well as virtues. Although the film might have been covertly influenced by the travails of the English royal family, incidents and situations portrayed in this film are products of an original scenario.Lastly, apart from Lambert Wilson and Valérie Lemercier, actors such as Mathilde Seigner, Gilbert Melki and Catherine Deneuve do give proper attention to their roles.