'Jeanne du Barry' director Maiwenn on finding common language with actor Johnny Depp

Maiwenn, the actress turned acclaimed director whose latest film, Jeanne du Barry, is the opening movie of the Haifa International Film Festival, traveled to Israel to present it there. The movie, which is also opening at theaters around Israel, features Johnny Depp in his first French-speaking role as King Louis XV of France, and Maiwenn as the titular courtesan who becomes the monarch’s favorite. 

Although this entertaining period drama – which also opened the Cannes Film Festival last spring – is based on a gossipy story of sex and power games in the French royal court, Maiwenn made it clear she was not about to dish any behind-the-scenes dirt in a Zoom interview she gave shortly before the film’s Haifa premiere. 

Still, it was tempting to ask whether Depp, who was embroiled in a years-long legal battle with his ex-wife, Amber Heard, ever spoke to Maiwenn about any connection he felt between his role as a king with almost no private life and his own experience of being caught in the media glare. 

“Our first meeting about the film was before the whole court case but of course, he was already very famous,” she said. “I didn’t ask if he felt close to the role of the king, and it wasn’t my place to ask. What was important to me in our first meeting was to see him close up, without all the artificial things, without a hat, without glasses or makeup, I wanted to see how his skin looked from up close, and what the dynamic and attraction was between us, if he was a nice and modest person, if we could find a common language.

"And that’s what happened that first time. We may have talked a bit about his trial as time went on, but I didn’t want to insist on talking about it, because that was his personal life and I kept my distance. I didn’t talk about my personal life much, either, and I didn’t want him to know much about me, just as I didn’t want to know too much about his personal life. On the contrary, to preserve the dynamic and natural attraction between us, the desire, I felt we had to keep a certain distance between us and honor that, and not know everything about each other.”

No stranger to headlines 

Maiwenn is no stranger to headlines herself and has often turned to her own life for inspiration for movies she has directed. A child actress of mixed French, Breton, Algerian, and Vietnamese ancestry, she became involved with director Luc Besson at the age of 15. They married and she bore their child when she was only 16, and she appeared in a supporting role in his movie, Leon, with Natalie Portman, as well as in The Fifth Element.

Almost 20 years ago, she began directing and has made such films as Pardonnez-Moi and All About Actresses, where she mined her own professional experiences to tell stories about women. In the drama, DNA, she explored her own Algerian heritage, while she also made the acclaimed police drama, Polisse, and My King, the story of a straitlaced woman who looks back on her relationship with a charming bad boy (Vincent Cassel). 

I wondered if having been in a relationship with one of France’s most successful directors as a teen, she identified with Jeanne’s story, and asked if it was her own story, to a degree. 

“Maybe there are some aspects of her story that are similar... I was a very young girl and I was with a very strong man. I got a lot of criticism for it, and I had to deal with a lot of rejection from the cinema world. So maybe there is an oblique and sarcastic metaphor here about the world of cinema, just a little, but there is no revenge here, because I was much younger than Jeanne du Barry and maybe I felt some disdain from people, and I could understand it. I wasn’t very well known as a young actress then, I didn’t get big parts. And then, in spite of that, I started to direct and the situation changed in the cinema world and in the cultural world, which does not accept young women. When I showed talent as a director, I was accepted.”

Maiwenn has made headlines in France for statements not quite in line with the #MeToo hierarchy, and her ex, Besson, was accused of sexual harassment by a number of women, but was never charged with a crime. So I asked if there is a statement about sexual harassment to be found in Jeanne’s story. 

“I started to work on the movie in 2016, long before there was #MeToo... I didn’t wait for that movement in order to feel like a feminist. I always had my positions, I always fought for my freedom. If I found myself having difficulties, I never thought it was because I was a woman. I would think about how I was doing as a director if I was having a problem with a producer who didn’t believe in me, but not because of being a woman.”

She knew little about du Barry when she began to research the story. “I had zero knowledge about her when I started the script. . . The first time I heard about this character was when I saw Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola in 2006, where she seems very provocative and uneducated... I started reading book after book about her and I got surprise after surprise and I found out that the reality was completely different.”

This is the first time she has made a huge period drama, but when I asked if it was a challenge to direct such a large-scale production, she said: “The film itself was a miracle. It’s a huge challenge to make a film, any film.”

She said she didn’t know exactly what film she would direct next, but she was sure about one thing: “I won’t be acting in the next one.”