Palais royal! (2005) - film review

Arnaud’s carefree life as a playboy prince comes to an abrupt end when his father, the much-loved king of a European country, is killed in a skiing accident.  Next in line to the throne is Arnaud’s brother, Prince Alban, but his mother, Queen Eugénia, declares Alban is unfit to be king because he is still a bachelor, and so Arnaud is named the heir apparent.  The news is ill-received by Arnaud’s wife Armelle, a speech therapist who is reluctant to give up her job and her anonymity to become an object of public scrutiny.  Try as she might, Armelle cannot help embarrassing her husband, and she begins to resent the humiliations his family subject her to.  The final straw is when she finds Arnaud in bed with her best friend.  Intent on revenge, Armelle decides to use the media to promote herself, at the expense of Arnaud and his family...

No prizes for spotting that the life and death of Diana Princess of Wales was the main inspiration for this royal-themed send-up, the third directorial offering from the multi-talented Valérie Lemercier.  The fictional royal family portrayed in this film is a curious melange of the real royal families of Europe, but the storyline is clearly most influenced by the Diana-Charles debacle which rocked the British royals to their cold alabaster cores in the 1990s.  The film feels like a back-handed homage to Princess Diana, a warm-hearted celebration of individuality over conformity with a soulless establishment.  

Lemercier assembles a fine cast which includes some of the biggest names in French cinema, each of whom gives great value.   Who better to play the scheming Catherine de Medici-like Queen Mother than the supremely regal Catherine Deneuve, and who better to play her shadowy eminence grise than Michel Aumont?   As the Diana-like lead character, Lemercier starts out as an appropriately dowdy housewife who, thanks to some animal-themed exercise lessons with Gilbert Melki, blossoms into the glamorous People’s Princess.  Palais royal is an entertaining yet surprisingly incisive portrayal of how today’s monarchies attempt to exploit the media for advantage, only to end up being abused by the same media as they fall prey to the endless "bread and circuses" ritual.

© James Travers 2008

I stumbled across filmsdefrance.com only a matter of weeks ago whilst looking for something else (nice to know that serendipity is alive and well and living in cyberspace).  As someone who has loved French cinema for most of my life, I set about recording my thoughts/impressions etc.  The problem is how to approach it.  I have so many favourites (writers like Spaak, Prévert, Aurenche, Jeanson; directors like Duvivier, Carné, Feyder, Chenal, Valentin; actors like Raimu, Montand, Carette, Arletty, Feuillère, Morgan, Signoret, and these are only the Old School) that it would be easy just to start with one individual and review his/her entire oeuvre but that would be time-consuming so I opted to dip into favourites balancing the old and the new, which brings me here and now to triple-threat Valérie Lemercier, very gifted actress, equally gifted writer and director.

Lemercier began directing with a remake of Sacha Guitry’s old boulevard entry Quartet and made a fine job of it.  Next came a brace of originals of which Palais Royale is the latest and arguably the best.  There is clearly some ambiguity at work here because the only other review seems to think it is a homage to Diana whilst I have the definite impression that it is a wicked satire on the people’s princess.  Whatever, it is a total joy from beginning to end with Lemercier delivering in all three departments. 

Even the comparatively small role of the elder son (or, given that we are dealing with nobility, the low sperm Count) Michel Vuillermoz is excellent.  It is the fact that he is unable to father an heir that propels younger brother Lambert Wilson onto the throne, at once reinforcing even as they deny the parallels (in 1936, the younger brother, George, succeeded to the English throne in the wake of elder brother Edward abdicating in order to marry a divorced woman; George had two daughters, Wilson has two ...). 

Lemercier is merciless in her sending-up of Diana and at least half the population will rejoice as she stops a pie with her face.  I can’t see it playing in England but what the heck, I saw it in Paris and I own the DVD.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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