Palais royal!

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.)

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.

Palais royal! is a fun little satire of royal courtly life loosely based on the tragic tale of Charles and Diana. Valérie Lemercier casts herself in the titular role of Armelle, the improbable and frumpy orthophonist wife of royal Prince Arnaud (Lambert Wilson) of some fictional generic Francophone European kingdom. Suddenly her father-in-law dies, and her brother-in-law Alban - Arnaud's elder - is rudely passed over for want of children, as required by the kingdom's fundamental laws. Arnaud becomes king regnant and Armelle queen consort, and much to her consternation their happy and privileged but marginal life gives way to the full and taxing burdens of official duties and, of course, nasty courtly intrigues. When she realizes just how close to home these intrigues hit, Armelle transforms almost overnight, subtly planting traps exposing the two-facedness of those around her (including her two-timing husband as well as the vicious Queen Mother incarnated by Catherine Deneuve), all the while endearing herself to the people.

As Guy Bellinger says, her antics are a bit vulgar in and of themselves and this tempers the satire somewhat. And her metamorphosis is just a bit rapid. Nevertheless, even with the vulgarity I think they've managed to capture - albeit somewhat unintentionally - the full spectrum of Lady Di's own flaws, antics and resentments in an analogous, less beautiful and less glamorous but every bit as much energetic leading lady. The interiors of the royal couple's living spaces did, I must opine, leave much to be desired: at some points I felt I was looking at a flyer for a new subdivision of North American McMansions. The substance was a bit thin aganst the backdrop of what I know about royal protocol and life in general, although I didn't see any one thing I would deem "inaccurate" - just perhaps a bit reductionist or incomplete.

It's entertaining, however, and worth seeing for the performances. If you don't sympathize with the characters despite their obvious flaws, though, it will be difficult to sit through to the end (which does, I feel, come a bit quick).

Awful, awful, and awful ! Even worse than " Brice of Nice" ... Even worse than " Arbres" ... Not even a glimpse of interest ! Vulgar, rogue, ... The only consolation I had was to see it on a DVD . Wasting ten dollars for such a crap in a theater would have been just unbearable !!!!!! I you want to see a Valerie Lemercier at her best, pass your way on Palais Royal and try to find the one and only " The Visitors" DVD one of my funniest movies! Actually, speaking of "Palais Royal", I really don't understand how such good actors like Denis Podalydes or Valerie Lemercier herself have accepted to play in such a movie. Oh, sorry, I was forgetting : Valerie Lemercier is the Director ! As a lesson, good actors don't always mean good film makers.

MutantMutton

Reviewer destinationssecretes sums it up well: vulgar and rogue. And pedestrian... Deneuve is excellent though. Lemercier can be pretty funny if directed well, that is obviously here, not by her own self...