Palais royal!

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...

First of all, I am a huge fan of Valérie Lemercier! She's been entertaining us for nearly 20 years and she's still surprising us yet. "Palais Royal !" is her third work as a director, and it is the funniest. Her previous two efforts were good, but with this one, she proves herself as a great writer.

The storyline is very simple : After the King dies, her husband (played by the always classy Lambert Wilson) is destined to take the crown, and her to become part of a world she doesn't really know of. As you can see, the plot is very basic, but what shows Lemercier's cleverness is her ability to laugh at the clichés and the explore every little details of her characters. Her screenplay is full of subtle jokes and plays of words - some can regret that a few jokes are a bit... vulgar, but always very funny if you can understand the double meanings.

As for the actors, we have a royal cast here: Queen Catherine Deneuve (who's never been so funny), the sarcastic Michel Aumont and the hilarious Gilbert Melki, among others (all are very good). Last but not least, Valerie Lemercier shows us one more time she's a gifted actress by handling all the versatility of her character.

"Palais Royal !" is the best French comedy of the year !

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).

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.

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.