Film Review: ‘Farewell, My Queen’ Paints Seductive Portrait of Encroaching Doom

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CHICAGO – Is there any actress in the world today with more seductive and transfixing eyes than Léa Seydoux? She often tilts her head in a direction that allows her to peer up from beneath lowered brows. Stanley Kubrick would loved to photograph her. Yet her radiant orbs are capable of conveying more than mere menace. She can appear frighteningly vulnerable and coldly calculating within the same take.

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.0/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

In Benoît Jacquot’s quietly entrancing picture, “Farewell, My Queen,” Seydoux’s eyes smolder with desire, even as budding tears threaten to disrupt her unwavering gaze. Based on Chantal Thomas’s book of the same name, “Queen” revolves around a fictitious love triangle in Versailles that was dismantled during the last crucial days of the French Revolution. Though it often plays like the final episode of an epic miniseries, Jacquot and his cast makes the most of every moment.

StarRead Matt Fagerholm’s full review of “Farewell, My Queen” in our reviews section.

Seydoux plays Sidonie Laborde, a young servant girl who takes pleasure in her duties as a personal reader for Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). Her infatuation with the Queen is so strong that it has blossomed into idolization. The Queen seems to sense this, and stokes the flames by treating her as a prized companion. In the film’s early moments, I was waiting for Jacquot’s film to develop into a lesbian variation on Sofia Coppola’s feminist Antoinette saga. Yet whereas Coppola’s 2006 “Marie Antoinette” was a lighter, more frivolous affair tinged with bitter poignance, Jacquot’s film is clearly aiming for a more grounded sense of realism, while using the Queen’s rumored lesbianism as the launching pad for its tale. Though Antoinette appears to have feelings for her adoring servant, her true emotions are held in check. It isn’t until the clock starts ticking away on her untimely fate that Antoinette finally decides to open up to Sidonie about the great love of her life: the Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen of Jacquot’s “A Single Girl”). When Bastille falls, it has the same effect on Versailles that the iceberg had on the Titanic. Over the course of three frantic days, the palace’s inhabitants scramble for lifeboats as outraged voices start clamoring for their heads. This chaotic backdrop may suggest a more explosive and suspenseful picture, but the film’s most compelling drama takes place within the mind of its heroine.

‘Farewell, My Queen’ stars Léa Seydoux, Diane Kruger, Virginie Ledoyen, Xavier Beauvois, Noémie Lvovsky, Michel Robin, Julie-Marie Parmentier and Lolita Chammah. It was written by Benoît Jacquot and Gilles Taurand and directed by Benoît Jacquot. It opened July 20th at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema. It is rated R.

StarContinue reading for Matt Fagerholm’s full “Farewell, My Queen” review.

Léa Seydoux stars in Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen.
Léa Seydoux stars in Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen.
Photo credit: Carole Bethuel/Cohen Media Group

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